As she had practiced in her bedroom, she did not draw on magic, did not call upon Maeve. She used only what came to her naturally to see. This had to have been how her father had worked: use only what was in the world already.
Shadow cloaked her sight, and the past lurched into the present.
Lorelei’s antumbra staggered from behind them this time. Cari whipped around to see the Lure clutch the doorframe to keep herself upright, then trip on the bed where she trembled in pain and fear until she was dead. The Shadow evaporated, but the body lay in the same position.
Cari sought the umbra of the House that had killed Lorelei, and this time, at long last, she perceived something different in the Shadow of its latest victim: Blood.
Magic had been infused with the organic matter of life. The Shadow itself still had the raw quality she’d sensed both at her father’s death and at Vauclain House. No umbra, no identity. This Shadow had been blooded.
“It’s not mage-made, is it?” Mason scrubbed his mouth and chin with his hand, as if to control his reaction.
She glanced over at him. His skin had turned dusky, every line and plane a monochrome of untamed magic. He was potent, there was no denying. Someone like Mason, with great ability, but no thumbprint, could have done this. Mason, who was a wild card of loyalties. You can’t trust me.
Had she, as her stepmother had suggested, been unknowingly seduced by him?
She was in fact seduced. Every part of her wanted him. Had he . . . encouraged that in her?
Cari reached out gently for magic from Maeve, because she had to see Mason. She had to know him so that she wouldn’t be tormented by doubts of what he was capable of unleashing on magekind, the race of people who’d shut him out all of his life. He had reason to be angry and bitter—his life, his son’s, all the insults to his blood. Had he created the mage plague?
Cari asked, and Maeve gave: the Shadow within Mason eddied, then convulsed. His eyes narrowed at her, so he knew she was using her power on him. That she suspected him of something, one more insult to his stray pride.
For so many reasons, this couldn’t be helped.
Mason’s Shadow was like stormy clouds over a bitter sea, but she was the mistress of Shadow, the queen of the night, and if she willed it, the Shadow clouds would part.
Yesss, dove . . .
At her command, they did part.
Maeve had mentioned that Mason had a beautiful blue star of a soul within him—a pretty thing that she had wanted to toy with. But Cari had no words for the light that pervaded Mason’s person. A star? Only if she were standing this close, three feet, from the star itself, its heat and radiance challenging the constitution of her flesh and bones, her umbra. She wanted to hide her sight from his brilliance.
Tantalizing, is he not? Maeve sighed.
Cari’s eyes burned and she filled with longing. She wanted one of those, to be like him, and burn forever so brightly. But the mighty Dolan was like Lorelei, who had been left with nothing at death. A generation, and she would be forgotten.
No wonder there were wars between Order and Shadow. No wonder Light always won. Mason Stray, outcast and human, the least of the Shadow born, was astounding.
Mason endured the brush and soul stroke of Cari’s power. She’d suspected, or had known outright—there was no hiding. She shredded the hold he had on his Shadow to look inside him.
He was human.
Had she suspected he was worse than that? A killer? Yes, he’d killed before. Or did she think he was even more evil? The source of the plague?
Look hard then.
“You finished?”
Cari let go of the Shadow and cleared her sight. He was innocent; she knew it with absolute certainty by the magic of her House. “You’re right. I think that whoever is doing this isn’t a mage. There’s blood mixed in with the Shadow, and I think it’s the blood that is killing the mages. Poisoned. Burning us from the inside out.”
“Angelic?” He was referring to the angel who’d thrown a spear at her.
“Or human,” she said. She would not force an admission of humanity from Mason. But someone like him—if there was another—needed to be considered.
Mason’s jaw twitched at that, but he didn’t defend himself. Cari suspected his pride wouldn’t let him, and she didn’t want to push him any farther just then.
Maeve, am I right? Cari didn’t like addressing the fae, but she didn’t want to lose this opportunity. She had her father to think of.
I cannot see who brought death upon that child. The child being Lorelei, though she must’ve been in her forties.
Then could it have been made by someone with a soul?
Yesss.
Mason’s jaw flexed. “We need to warn Kaye Brand, though Jack Bastian will know more about what to do.”
Maeve rose inside her, causing a panicked feeling in Cari’s chest. I don’t. Like. Angels.
“At least we have a theory to report.” Cari could barely look at Mason, with his bright soul. She’d had a crush on him once, and even then her fantasies had seemed ludicrous.
“We’ll need more than that.” He looked around the room.
She tried to follow his gaze, careful of his anger. “What are you looking for?”
“We need proof.” He took an empty plastic water bottle that had been left to the side of the bed. Opened the lid. Let the water inside glug to the floor. “We need a sample.”
She almost laughed—bitterly. “We can’t hold and transport Shadow.” That’s exactly what her Umbra project was supposed to do. She’d scream if Mason managed it with a plastic bottle.
“The Shadow won’t keep, but the blood will.” He went over to the body and scraped an open wound with the funnel of the plastic top. A little bit of Lorelei Blake glopped to the bottom of the bottle. Gray, bloody pus lay in a smoking, noxious little lump.
Cari was going to be sick. It was the most disgusting thing she’d ever seen.
Mason screwed the cap on. How he could get his skin remotely close to any smear of the stuff was beyond her.
Shadow wisped inside the bottle. Grasped in his hand, he raised it. “Hold,” he said. The plastic of the bottle crackled with lines of black magic, like shattered glass.
Shadow filtered out through the sides, like mist. “How did you do that?”
He didn’t seem in the mood to answer. “Open your purse.”
She almost complained about putting the unclean thing in her very nice bag. But it was the logical place to transport it. She fished out her phone and gave it to Mason to hold in his pants’ pocket. He rolled his eyes when she handed over her driver’s license and credit cards, too.
Then she opened the bag wide and let him drop the awful thing inside.
“Let’s get out of here.” He had good reason to be angry. She’d invaded his most intimate space, sought his soul. After seeing its light, she understood what an insult, what a terrible breach that had been. There was no way that Mason could’ve ever set the plague on magekind. She knew him.
“Mason—”
“Not now.” He gripped the open door.
Cari let the matter go. She wasn’t going to apologize later either. She’d had to know, and now she did. She shouldered her bag.
“They’re all below, at the base of the stairs.”
Yes, a gathering of Lures, standing in a semi-circle like a smoky net to catch them. “Maybe they’re just waiting for word of what we found.”
“They’re not. They want you, the new Dolan, at their beck and call, and this is probably their only chance.”
It was simply what their House did for power, and she had to concede that Dolan was a tempting target.