“Pick it up,” Cullen repeated, “paying careful attention to your hands. As if you were handling something important and fragile.”
Looking mystified and annoyed, Jasper went to the table and slowly picked up the vase.
“You don’t even know you’re leaking, do you?”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“You don’t leak much. Probably not enough for you to see, given how slight your Gift is. But when you focus on your hands, you shoot out small streams of magic. Enough,” Cullen finished gloomily, “to turn on my damn prototype.”
“Wait a minute,” Lily said. “You made it so any stray bit of magic could turn it on?”
“Not stray magic. Focused magic. The kind a sorcerer uses without aid from props likes spells. It was supposed to be a safety precaution. I wouldn’t have thought an untrained, denies-he’s-a-sorcerer, barely Gifted neophyte could focus power he can’t even bloody see, not tightly enough to be a problem. It seems I was wrong.”
“So the prototype isn’t just missing—it’s broadcasting,” Lily said grimly. “Which means any nulls in the vicinity could be having some real strange memories.” She pulled out her phone. “Damn. It’s after one in D.C. I hate to wake Ruben.”
“He may not be asleep,” Rule said. “He doesn’t need as much sleep these days. But perhaps we should decide first how much of this to believe.”
She met his gaze. Nodded. “Even if it’s all true, he could still be omitting things. Maybe he’s still acting on Friar’s instructions, and the goal is to get Cynna here.”
“Or to get us to that garage.”
“Or both. Most of what he’s told us confirms what we already suspected.”
“I understand why you would doubt me,” Jasper said, “but there’s one thing I can tell you that you haven’t suspected. Friar’s working with one of the sidhe.”
“I knew it!” Cullen exclaimed. “Damned elves.”
Jasper’s eyebrows shot up. “You already knew?”
“He didn’t, actually,” Lily said, “but we did suspect they were involved somehow. Why do you say Friar’s working with them?”
“With them or for them. Or one of them. I heard her talking once when Friar called to chat, and it sounded like she was telling him what to do. Not that I know what she said, but she sounded in charge. And that voice…it had to be an elf. No one else could sound like that.”
Some of the sidhe delegation had given interviews on TV. The translation device they used relied on a form of mind-magic, which only worked in person, so the gnome had translated for the television audience. But everyone had heard their voices as they answered in their own language, and Jasper was right. No one and nothing sounded like an elf.
Except maybe a halfling? One of the elves was female, but so was the halfling. She didn’t look elfin, but halfling meant mixed blood and she was sidhe, which meant some of that mix was elf. The halfling hadn’t given any interviews, though—at least none Lily had seen. Lily didn’t know if she sounded like a fountain or a flute or something else impossibly musical the way the elves did. “You’re sure it was a female voice?”
He nodded.
She looked at Rule and tried something. You buying this?
A flicker of surprise on his face told her it had worked. She felt ridiculously pleased, kind of like when, in the second grade, she’d suddenly grasped the mystery of fractions. He gave a small nod, but she didn’t “hear” him reply.
Apparently sending and receiving mindspeech were two distinct skills. Me, too, she sent, or thought she did. Impossible to be sure, since his face didn’t give her a clue this time.
She’d have to chance waking Ruben up. The trade delegation was almost certainly involved. The prototype was not just missing, but active—and therefore actively altering memories in weird and unpredictable ways.
“Hold on a minute,” Drummond said. “I’ve got an idea. If I’m right, you’ll want to hear it before you call Brooks.”
Lily had almost forgotten he was here. What did it mean that she could get so used to a see-through guy that she stopped noticing him? “What?” she said—and realized she’d spoken out loud, and glanced at Jasper. Should she tell him? Did it matter if he knew she was a mite haunted?
Reluctantly she decided it might. If spilling his guts to Friar would buy Adam’s life—or if he thought it would—Friar would know all about Drummond, too. She wasn’t sure that mattered, but any information they kept from Friar might give them an advantage.
Drummond had straightened away from his spot against the wall and walked closer. He went around Scott just as if he’d been solid. “I’ve got a couple questions for the sorcerer.”
Okay. She glanced at Rule and tried to do it again with him. It felt different when she mindpsoke Rule. She couldn’t define the difference, but it was as obvious as the difference between her right hand and her left. I’m going to wait so Drummond can ask some questions first. He thinks it’s important.
His eyebrows lifted.
Drummond looked at Cullen. “This gizmo of his—it puts out some kind of mind-magic, right? And it’s turned on.”
Lily spoke to Cullen. “Your prototype is turned on. That means it’s putting out mind-magic.”
Cullen looked impatient. “Good to know you paid attention when I told you about it this time.”
“What about his Find spell?” Drummond asked. “Is that mind-magic, too?”
She repeated it: “Is your Find spell mind-magic?”
“Not exactly. It—wait. Shit. That’s it. That’s why I can’t make the bloody spell work! Lily, you’re a bloody genius!” He took two long strides—right through Drummond, who scowled fiercely—grabbed her by the shoulders, and kissed her smack on the mouth. “Find spells aren’t mind-magic, but they’re Air, and so is mind-magic, and when you look at the congruencies—never mind. You don’t want to hear all that. The prototype itself is screwing up my spell!”
“And you’re delighted about this because…?”
“Because now I know.”
Drummond answered at the same time. “Because now we know why they want it so damn bad.”
Lily looked quickly at him. “What…” What do you mean?
He rolled his eyes. “Isn’t it obvious? The prototype keeps the woo-woo types from Finding things. These perps have kidnapped two people, and if they have the prototype, you aren’t going to Find them.”
THIRTY
RULE knew by the look on Lily’s face that Drummond had said something important. When she passed it on, Cullen’s eyes went wide. “That’s it. Could that be it? Hard to believe I made something the elves don’t have twice as good already, when they could—no, wait, what if that bit from Kålidåsa’s Siddhanta is new to them? They don’t borrow much from human traditions. Hell, they don’t think much of humans, period, so if they never—I need to go.”
“Go where?” Rule asked.
Cullen started for the entry. “Go think. I can’t think with everyone yammering.”
At the moment, he was the only one speaking. “The conference room?” Rule said to Cullen’s back. He gestured for Marcus and Steve to follow.
“Yes,” Cullen said on his way out the door.
“I don’t know,” Lily said slowly, “if Cullen’s a hundred percent on target, but close. Only why is Friar involved? I don’t think we can assume the main purpose he has for the device is to hide his captives from Find spells.”
She said that to empty air. At least it looked empty to Rule at first, but something was there, a paleness blurring the air…and a glow. A soft, golden glow in one spot. Abruptly that paleness sharpened into clarity. He saw Al Drummond standing there—the combed-back hair, the sardonic expression, and the gold wedding ring on his left hand.