“I covered that with the first ‘if.’ ”
Rule did not look as if he agreed, but he didn’t object out loud. Cullen was looking from Lily to the place where Drummond stood. Or hovered. Whatever. He muttered something and made a gesture.
Drummond turned to glare at him. “Shit! Tell your spooky friend not to do that. It itches.”
“You’re calling him spooky?” Lily looked at Cullen. “What did you do? Drummond said it made him itch.”
“Variant on a Find spell. Checking for ghosts.” He grinned. “It worked.”
“You couldn’t just take my word for it?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind.” She looked at Drummond. “You willing to check out that blue house in the middle of the block? Number 1129. Jasper Machek should be inside. He’s fifty-three, six-one, around one-fifty-five, dark hair and eyes. We need to know if anyone else is with him.”
“Should be within my range, but just barely. Don’t go wandering off.” With that he evaporated, or mostly. A wispy trace zipped off down the sidewalk.
“It’s so weird that you can’t see or hear him,” Lily said.
“Maybe I can make it so I can,” Cullen said. “It will take some tweaking, but if my Find spell works for him, I should be able to make him visible. At least briefly, and to me,” he added. “And it won’t help with hearing.”
“Aren’t ghosts connected to spirit?” Wiccan doctrine claimed there were five elements—air, earth, fire, water, and spirit. Spirit was different from the other four. Fire, earth, air, and water were types of magic, but spirit was something else or other or more. Lily didn’t know what, and no one had been able to define it for her, but that “something else” quality was why she could see and hear Drummond. Her Gift didn’t block spirit. “I thought your kind of magic didn’t work on spirit.”
“It doesn’t, but if I…do you really want me to explain?”
“Now that you mention it—no.”
“Lily.”
She looked at Rule, who was staring down the sidewalk, an odd expression on his face. “What?”
“I saw it. Him. For a minute it looked like a bit of fog moving down the sidewalk.”
“That’s almost weirder than you not seeing him.”
“It has to be the mate bond, doesn’t it? Somehow it let me share what you see, in a limited way. It hasn’t done anything like that in a long time.”
Not since they were captured by the Great Bitch’s agents, in fact. “The bond was new then. I thought that was why our abilities sort of slopped over onto each other for a while.”
“The newness made it possible. The Lady made it happen. Why would the Lady want me able to see Drummond?” He frowned. “I think you need to talk with the Etorri Rhej again.”
“I just did. What could I ask her that I haven’t already?”
“It’s more what you’d tell her. Drummond says he can’t manifest at Clanhome. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? It makes me wonder if he’s contaminated by her. If he’s the Great Bitch’s agent, being at Clanhome might inhibit what he can do.”
“Wouldn’t your father know if he were?” If someone contaminated by her power crossed onto Clanhome, the mantle would alert Isen. At least that was how it was supposed to work.
“Does that apply to a ghost? I don’t know. Do you?”
If he didn’t, she sure as hell had no clue. “I guess I should call her. But not,” she said with a glance up the street, “right now.” A pale mist wafted quickly back down the sidewalk toward them. She waited until it reached them to say, “That was quick.”
The fog shaped itself into Drummond’s too-familiar form. “Doesn’t take long if I’m just counting live bodies. You glow.”
“Who does? What do you mean?”
“All you embodied types. From this side, you’ve got a glow. I don’t have to manifest to see it.”
“Huh.”
“Machek’s there, or someone who matches his description. No one else, except for the cats. Two of them.”
“They glow, too?”
He grimaced. “They’ve got bodies, so…yeah.”
She glanced at Rule. “He says Machek’s inside with two cats. No one else.”
Rule cast a hard look in Drummond’s general direction. “Guess we’ll find out.”
RULE didn’t feel sick. Maybe his stomach felt like he’d swallowed rocks, but that was not the same as feeling sick. He was tense, yes. His muscles were tight in a way that would interfere with quick action, if such were needed, so as he climbed the stairs he went through a quick relaxation routine…again.
Why was he reacting this way? He didn’t understand. He wished he would stop.
There was a narrow porch at the top of the stairs, overhung by the roof. The door was stained rather than painted, the wood mellow with age and sheened by a recent cleaning with mineral oil, judging by the faint scent. Lily stood to his right, Cullen to his left and slightly behind. Scott had his back. Lily had her weapon out.
Rule pressed the doorbell.
Footsteps on a wooden floor. The door opened. Rule looked into his own eyes.
“Rule Turner,” the man with his eyes said. His gaze drifted to Lily, snagged for a second on her gun. First his eyebrows shot up, then his mouth kicked up…a mouth not shaped like Rule’s. It was wider, with a mobile flex that spoke of easy smiles. “And company. More company than I was expecting, but come in, all of you.” He opened the door wide, then wandered away, apparently trusting them to follow.
Rule did, with Lily right behind him. Then Cullen, then Scott, who closed the door their host had apparently lost interest in.
The entry hall was small, dominated by a huge abstract painting—mostly orange, with geometric shapes dancing across it in a way that suggested fire. Beside the bit of wall that held the painting was a staircase; otherwise the entry was open to the living room on the left. That was eclectically furnished, with tables in both old wood and polished steel; African masks, ink drawings, and framed posters on taupe walls; an old church pew and two wing chairs grouped with a cream-colored contemporary sofa.
Jasper plopped down in one of the wing chairs and gestured at the sofa. His hair was the same color as Rule’s, but curly. And graying. “Come in and sit, and perhaps you’d like to put that gun away?” The last was accompanied by a roguish waggle of his eyebrows, as if he invited Lily to some faintly wicked act.
“We’ll see,” she said pleasantly as she and Rule entered the room trailing Cullen and Scott. “You’re Jasper Machek?”
“And you’re Lily Yu.” That wide mouth stretched in an attractive smile. “I’ve seen you interviewed. You’re even lovelier in person, I must say, than on TV. But I don’t know the two gentlemen with you who are not Rule Turner.”
“Cullen Seabourne and Scott White.”
“Seabourne.” Machek’s eyebrows lifted. “How awkward, yet how convenient.”
Cullen answered him coolly. “Is it, now?”
Machek didn’t respond, apparently fascinated by the sight of Cullen. Rule glanced around the large room. Someone had poured quite a bit of money into the house, gutting this floor to create the kind of open floor plan beloved of designers these days. At one end, the big bay window held a cluttered roll-top desk, its top open. A pile of fur slept on top of an assortment of papers there…a cat, actually, but Rule wouldn’t have known that if not for his nose. Couch, church pew, and chairs in the middle. Dining at the far end, with the kitchen around the corner.
The room smelled of cats, people, peppers, and ginger. Chinese takeout, he guessed, glancing at the square dining table, where a foam container held what remained of today’s lunch.
With his immediate territory charted, he took Machek up on his invitation to sit, choosing one end of the couch. The end nearest his newfound kin. He drew in a slow breath and learned that Machek was a good deal more anxious than he looked. And guilty about something.