“No one put me under your goddamn orders,” he grumbled, but he followed. He even brought the mage light with him.
It provided plenty of light, so she flicked her flashlight off and stuck it back in her purse. “So what’s the side effect that makes the prototype not ready for prime time?”
“It can create persistent, temporally displaced illusions in nulls.”
“Temporally displaced…unpack that for me.”
He shrugged. “Memories. Vivid, hallucinogenic memories of shit that never happened. Usually shit that couldn’t have happened, like flying rats in goggles and aviator jackets.”
“Flying rats.”
“With wings. Dressed up like World War I pilots.” He sighed. “That one came from the VP in charge of development. The really weird part was how little it bothered him. He clearly remembered seeing those rats flapping along beside the plane when he flew in that morning—he’d had a window seat—but the memory didn’t strike him as odd. After we talked things out, he agreed that there couldn’t really be any flying rats, so it had to be a hallucinatory memory, but he seemed to think I was making a lot of fuss about something pretty trivial. So did the other two.”
“The other two?”
“I did the demo for four execs from T-Corp. Three of them were nulls, not a whiff of magic to ’em. One was a practicing Wiccan—Air Gift, not strong, but well trained. The Gifted guy didn’t experience any hallucinogenic memories. The three nulls did. The fabricated memories all involved events that really occurred on that day between seven and four hours prior to the demo.”
“If they didn’t recognize the, uh, fabricated memories as bizarre, how did you find out about them? No, wait—I want to know that and a bunch of other things, like what the prototype looks like. But I need to call the CSI team first.” She reached for the phone in her jacket pocket. “Do you have a photo of it?’
“No photo.”
“What does it—”
“I’m afraid you can’t call CSI,” Rule said from the shadows partway up the slope.
She frowned at him. “Sure I can. If I don’t have any bars here I’ll head up the hill.”
“Isen forbids it. That means less to you than to the rest of us, but this isn’t a Unit matter. No magic was used in the crime.”
Her first reaction was to call it in anyway. Rule was wrong; MCD could only investigate felonies committed using magic, but she was Unit. She could investigate anything connected with magic, including the theft of a magical object. But if he wanted to, Isen could make investigation impossible. If their Rho told them to, every lupus at Clanhome would insist there had been no explosion, no intruder, and nothing was missing. Every damn one of them, including Cullen.
Including Rule.
“Cullen,” she said, her voice tight, “how about you go burn something while I chat with Rule?”
“Oh, stop and think, Lily,” Cullen said crossly as he brushed past her. “It’s obvious why Isen doesn’t want outsiders involved.”
Not to her, it wasn’t. “Well?” she said to Rule.
He sighed. “How did the thief know where to find the prototype?”
Ah, shit. Double shit. She should have thought of that.
There were other possibilities than the obvious. The thief might have conducted aerial surveillance. Photos that showed Cullen going to and from the workshop, for example, would locate it. But that was not the only way for him to find out. Not the easiest way, nor the most certain. Not the likeliest way. Her stomach hurt when she said it out loud. “Isen thinks there’s a traitor in the clan.”
“He believes it likely, yes. Or among our guests. Isen has called all three clans present at Clanhome to the meeting ground.”
Her eyes widened. “All of them? Will everyone fit?”
“Some of the tenders are excused to care for the children, as are those guards needed for patrol and those still fighting the fire on Big Sister—which was under control but not out, the last I heard. Otherwise, every adult must attend. He asked that I include my Leidolf guards. I agreed, with the stipulation that Leidolf be questioned first.”
Rule was Lu Nuncio to Nokolai—heir and enforcer, basically. Obedient to his Rho. He was, however, also a Rho in his own right. Rho to Leidolf, Nokolai’s longtime enemy. Two-mantled, some were calling him. Even at Nokolai Clanhome, Isen couldn’t command the Leidolf guards. He couldn’t order his son to bring them. He could only request. “Why first?”
“Most of those present will already be blaming my Leidolf guards. They must be shown quickly and publicly to be untainted. Lily, we need to go to the meeting field now.”
“In just a minute. First I need to—”
“This isn’t the time to argue. We have to go. My father is very angry.”
“He would be.”
“You don’t understand. You’ve never seen him deeply angry.”
No, she hadn’t. She’d seen Isen laughing, kind, ruthless, annoyed, tender, and ready to kill. But deeply angry…“How mad is he? Are you worried he’ll lose control?”
He hesitated. Only for a second, but that scared her as his words hadn’t. “No. Of course not.”
CULLEN accompanied them. The guards didn’t. They were among those excused, which reassured Lily somewhat. Isen might be throwing a Rho-sized hissy, but he hadn’t stopped thinking entirely. He’d left essential personnel on duty.
Some of them, anyway. The guards were guarding the scene, not investigating it. That’s what Lily should have been doing instead of tramping back down half a mountain. That and calling in the crime scene techs, dammit.
For several minutes none of them spoke. Lily was thinking hard and not liking the answers she turned up. She figured the others were in the same boat.
It was a brisk, clear night. The sky was heavy with stars the way you only see it this far from the city. The moon was a thin fingernail clipping lodged high overhead. That would have been plenty of light for the two men with her, but fortunately Cullen had remembered that it wasn’t enough for her. He’d held onto one of the mage lights and kept it bobbing a few paces ahead, giving her a good view of the ground and throwing weird shadows. The wind was soft, brushing at her hair and cheeks with airy caresses. It smelled of burning.
It would take them about twenty minutes to reach the meeting field, going at her slow, human pace. Might as well make use of that time. “Did you learn anything from the perp’s scent trail?” she asked Rule.
“Yes. José and his squad followed the strongest scent trail. Usually that means the most recent, but not this time. The thief had laid a false trail earlier by taking off his shoes and going back and forth barefooted along one stretch. Had José been less distracted by his own loss of smell, by the sudden blare of the klaxon, he’d have seen that the footprints changed from shod to bare.”
“Clever. He expected his pursuers to trust scent over sight. He knows something about lupi.”
He nodded grimly. “Too much.”
“There may be a traitor, but don’t lean on that idea too heavily. Yeah, the perp could have learned about lupi from a confederate here at Clanhome. Or he might know someone who knows a lot about lupi—an ospi friend or girlfriend or whatever—or maybe he hacked into the FBI database. There’s a lot about you there. Or he could just be damn good at research. He’s a planner. Cullen.”
He didn’t answer. She glanced back at him—he was trailing slightly behind her and Rule, frowning faintly as if he found the ground ahead of him perplexing. She suspected he didn’t even see it. “Cullen,” she repeated.
His frown tightened as he looked up. “What?”
“Who knows about the prototype?”