“Cullen.”
“Too much? Okay. I used lemon quartz because Air magic can’t be stored, but mind-magic can, and lemon quartz is generally the best matrix for mind-magic. But in this case, the power settles easily into lemon quartz.” He stopped. His expression shifted to gloom. “And that’s the problem.”
“I thought the problem was that the device makes the unGifted have false memories. Memories of weird stuff.”
“It does that when the array discharges suddenly, and it does that because the magic is unstable when it enters the array. It finishes transforming into mind-magic while it’s in there, but the initial instability messes up the matrix.” He brooded on that a moment before adding, “At least I think that’s what’s happening.”
“Why does the discharge only affect nulls?”
He shrugged. “I’ve told you what I know. I need the damn prototype back to run more tests.”
“You can make another if you have to, right?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Tell her,” Rule said.
Okay, he had been listening, after all.
“But…” Cullen’s gaze went significantly toward the front seat.
Rule closed the folder. “Oh, very well. Scott, you will not speak of or otherwise reveal what Cullen says about his prototype to anyone who is not present in this car now. José, the same instruction for you, with the exception of your Rho. That was unnecessary,” he added to Cullen, “but I trust you feel better now.”
Cullen scowled and looked at Lily. “No notes. This does not go into your report. It doesn’t get written down.”
“I’ll agree to keep it off the record for now. I can’t agree it will never go in the record.”
His scowl didn’t ease. “Rule—”
“You mistake my authority if you think I can tell Lily what to do.”
“I just thought…never mind.” He looked directly at Lily. “No notes.”
She clicked her pen and set it down.
“I made the prototype over five weeks ago. It’s still working.”
“Okay.”
He made an impatient sound. “Five weeks, and I haven’t renewed the charm.”
“But you told me charms couldn’t last beyond one moon cycle without being renewed. Only artifacts can.…shit. You mean—”
“It’s not an artifact. Not really. It has about as much in common with real artifacts as Alexander Volta’s ‘voltaic pile’ would with a modern lithium battery. But it is the first self-renewing charm created in our world since the last adept died, and it is possibly a first step toward creating a genuine artifact.”
“But that means…” Her fingers twitched. Writing things down helped her think, dammit. “That means that whoever took it may not be interested in how it protects tech, or in creating weird fake memories. They may have had it stolen because it’s a…a quasi-artifact. Who else knows about this?” she demanded.
“Three more people than did a minute ago,” he said dryly. “The only ones I’ve told until now were Cynna, Rule, and Isen. But it’s possible the wrong person saw the prototype. I’m no adept. I don’t know how to hide the guts of a spell or charm the way they did. If a sorcerer saw my prototype, he or she might be able to figure out what it was. What it could do, if not exactly how it worked.”
“So now we’ve got sorcerers as well as several major corporations for suspects.” Not that this expanded their pool enormously. Sorcerers were extremely rare. But they were also extremely secretive, which meant they’d have a helluva time figuring out who, exactly, went on the suspect list. “And you’re just now mentioning this?”
He sighed. “We probably have to add one more group to your list.”
“Who?’
“You know that trade delegation that arrived in D.C. via the Edge gate about two weeks ago? First inter-realm trade in hundreds of years.”
“Of course.” The news had been full of it.
“The delegates include three elves, several humans who seem to be servants, and a halfling of some kind.”
“Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures. She’s kind of…shit. You don’t mean—”
“I’m afraid so. Last week, I heard from some flunky in the State Department. Benessarai An’Cholai expressed an interest in seeing a demonstration of my prototype. We’re supposed to meet on January second.”
Shit, shit, shit. “Don’t tell me this Beness-whatever is a sidhe lord.”
“Ben-ESS-er-aye. Accent on the second syllable.”
“Benessarai,” she repeated impatiently. “Is he a sidhe lord?”
“He’s certainly sidhe—an elf—but not a lord. Or so the flunky said.”
“Would he be able to see magic the way you do? Some sidhe do, right? And how did he even hear about your prototype?’
“Excellent questions, and when you find the answers I hope you’ll share them with me.”
SEVENTEEN
THE addition of the sidhe—any sidhe—to the mix changed things considerably. Lily called Ruben with the news on the way to the airport. She put her phone on speaker. No point in pretending it was a private conversation. Not with lupi hearing.
Ruben made an ah sound of satisfaction. “There’s a connection,” he said definitely. “I don’t know what, but one or more of our visiting sidhe are connected to this theft. Your investigation is suddenly more important, Lily, but also a good deal trickier. There are political ramifications—you’ll let me worry about those—and the trade delegation has been granted temporary diplomatic immunity.”
Lily grimaced. “So I can’t arrest them even if they are guilty as hell.”
“The connection might be innocent. I don’t at the moment see how, but that doesn’t negate the possibility. For now, focus on finding out who’s involved and why they wanted the prototype and let me worry about how to make an arrest, if one is warranted. I have a feeling the ‘why’ will prove important. Oh, and ask Mr. Seabourne to please keep that appointment. I’d very much like to know why Benessarai is interested enough in the prototype to fly across the country.”
Cullen twisted around in his seat—his was sitting up front—and snorted. “So would I. The sidhe know how to make real artifacts. I’d also like to know how he heard about the prototype in the first place. Learning anything will be a real trick, of course, given the way the sidhe are about information. They consider secrecy an art form. Literally.” Cullen sighed. “Of course, Benessarai may not show up now, especially if he was just wanting a chuckle at the barbarian’s crude little device.”
Lily asked Ruben if he’d heard all that. Assured that he’d caught most of it, she said, “I can’t see this elf guy crossing the country just to laugh at your prototype.”
Cullen shook his head. “Elves are not human. They don’t organize life the way we do—and by ‘we’ I mean lupi as well as humans, because we both sort the world into good and evil. Elves don’t. On a fundamental level, they just don’t. Their highest value is dtha, which roughly translated means knowledge and beauty, which they don’t consider separate constructs, but more like two shades of the same color, or two lenses in a pair of glasses. Amusement is part of dtha. And no, I don’t understand why, but it is, and it matters to them in ways that seem frivolous or absurd to us. You know that sidhe lord I met when he came here on walkabout?”
“You’ve told me about him.”
“He violated an important ban to come to our realm. He left his land, his people, and sundered himself from a vast amount of power—he was a sidhe lord, remember, with the land-tie and all that implies. And he did all that because he thought it would be amusing.”