Blood Lines (24 page)

She was looking at Rule with a familiar expression on her face. Lily grinned. “Mine.”

“I can still drool, can’t I? You’re Rule Turner. Not only can I read your visitor’s badge, I read the gossip mags, and . . . no, better not go there. I’m supposed to be somewhere myself as of . . .” She checked her own watch. “Twelve minutes ago.”

“It’s good to almost meet you, Sandy,” Rule said.

She grinned, sighed, and bustled off down the hall. They headed for the next intersection in the maze, took a left, and arrived at Ida’s lair.

Ida was speaking into her headset, tapping away at a keyboard, and passing a file to the woman standing by her desk. “Take that in to Ruben,” she said without missing a keystroke. The other woman hurried to the door on the far wall.

Lily waited a moment, but Ida didn’t look up. “Cynna suspects she’s an alien,” she whispered, “but I think she has three brains. Has to, to multitask that way.”

“I heard that,” Ida said without looking away from the screen, adding—presumably into the headset—“You’re booked on the 4:30 flight. Yes. I’ll ask. For now, use the Morrison ID.”

“She also has supernaturally keen hearing,” Lily said in a normal voice. “I can’t figure out why I don’t get a buzz of magic from her.”

“Call Jules. No, not yet—I’ll let you know when we do. All right. Goodbye.” Ida stopped typing long enough to remove her headset. She spared Lily a glance. “The report you wanted is in the blue folder. I thought you might need it before your meeting.”

“And she’s supernaturally quick with flashes of omniscience.” Lily picked up the folder. “Thanks, Ida.”

“You’ve got thirty seconds to make it to the conference room.”

Lily hurried.

“Friendly soul,” Rule said.

“Maybe not, but she’s devoted to Ruben and the Unit—”

“How can you tell?”

“—and she’s got a better memory than my computer. You’re miffed because she didn’t drool.”

“I don’t expect drool. A glance, maybe, some hint of awareness . . . Do you think she’s a robot?”

Lily grinned and pushed open the door.

They walked in on a fierce argument. Sherry O’Shaunessy was stabbing her finger in the air at a man Lily didn’t recognize, who scowled back at her. The archbishop was nowhere in sight.

Sherry didn’t look like either of Hollywood’s versions of witches—the cackling crone or the nubile young Wiccan. Aside from the hair, that is. Her hair flowed in a gray and silver cascade to her hips, held out of her face by a silver headband. Otherwise she might have been someone’s suburban grandma: short, chubby, with rosy cheeks and blue eyes set off by plenty of smile lines. She wore tailored slacks and a sky-blue twinset.

Not that she was smiling now. The object of her stabbing finger was a man of about forty: skinny, wide mouth, rimless glasses, and thick eyebrows. Japanese or Korean descent, probably; wrinkled white dress shirt, conservative haircut, no tie, brown slacks.

The third person in the room, Dr. Xavier Fagin, wore cargo pants—an interesting sight on a man of his age and girth—a black T-shirt, and a tweed jacket. His white hair poked up in all directions like dandelion fluff. He was leaning back in his chair, fingers laced together over a comfortable paunch, smiling on the others like an aging hippie, still stoned after all these years.

“We can’t possibly accept the Dante Protocols as the basis for inter-realm transcorporation,” the unknown man insisted. “Its provenance is riddled with flaws. Flaws and outright deception.”

The high priestess threw up both hands. “Then where do we start? Because we have to make a start. Xavier . . .” She turned to Dr. Fagin.

“We have company,” the professor said mildly.

Sherry blinked, then smiled at them. “Sorry. We get intense. Since you’re Lily,” she said, her gaze flicking between them, “you must be Rule.”

He gave her back a smile. “I am. And you must be Sherry O’Shaunessy. Though we haven’t met, I’ve heard of your beauty.”

Rule could get away with saying things like that because he meant them. Lily wasn’t sure what his standards for beauty were, but they didn’t match with the usual ones. Maybe he just found women beautiful, period.

Dr. Fagin unlaced his fingers and pushed to his feet, holding out a hand. “Rule Turner? Pleased to meet you, sir, and glad you survived last night’s encounter. I’m Xavier Fagin.”

The older man kept right on talking as they shook. “One of our members is absent—Archbishop Brown—but he should rejoin us shortly. You’ve now met Sherry, who insists on calling me by my first name when everyone else calls me Fagin . . . among other, less repeatable things. Sherry’s co-combatant is Hikaru Ito. Ms. Yu, you won’t have met him, either. He arrived this afternoon.”

The name was Japanese, as were his features—second generation, probably. No accent, but a traditional first name.

Rule turned to Ito, smiling. “I’ve read your book on substitutionary symbology.”

Ito was still simmering over inter-realm transcorporation, but he made an effort to be civil. “Have you, now. And what did you think?”

“That it was way over my head. I passed it to a friend of mine who understands the lingo.”

“And did he offer an opinion?” Ito’s tone made it clear he doubted that anyone Rule knew could have understood his work.

“He called you brilliant but misguided.”

Ito snorted. “That’s better than many of my critics will concede. Fagin thinks I’m—”

“Brilliant but misguided,” Fagin said, chuckling. “About the Pythagorean linkage, that is. Liked what you did with Hambly’s translation. Neat. Very neat. Dr. Ito,” he added with a sleepy smile aimed in Lily’s direction, “is a symbolist, specializing in prophecies.”

Lily had no intention of letting the handshaking part of the introductions lag. Several people had summoned demons. It would be a bitch if one of the perps turned out to be on the task force. She held out her hand. “Pleased to met you, Dr. Ito. You’ve worked on Nostradamus’s prophecies as well, I think?”

He looked surprised but accepted her hand. “My one and only attempt at writing for the popular market. Didn’t sell well, I’m afraid.”

The tingle of magic was very faint, almost nonexistent. Lily dropped his hand and turned to Sherry, smiling. “We didn’t exactly meet earlier. I’m glad you’re here.” She extended her hand.

Sherry’s eyebrows lifted. “Checking us out?”

“Any reason I shouldn’t?”

“You sound like a cop.” But that was observation, not complaint. Sherry took Lily’s hand.

Good grip; the magic was strong, cool, flowing—a major water Gift. No trace of the demonic. Lily released the woman’s hand just as the door opened.

It was Archbishop Brown, looking intense. Lily suspected that was his usual expression. “I’ve cleared my calendar for two days,” he said abruptly. “That’s as much as I can . . . oh. Hello, Ms., ah . . . sorry. I’ve forgotten your last name.”

“Lily Yu,” she said, moving forward and holding out her hand. “And this is Rule Turner. Rule, Archbishop Brown.”

“Call me Patrick.” The cleric’s grip was firm, his palm dry. No magic. He gave Rule a sharp glance. “You’re the Nokolai prince.”

“Heir,” Rule said mildly. “ ‘Prince’ is the press’s term, and not particularly apt.”

He nodded once. “The press gets most things wrong. I’ve some questions for you about the demon you encountered.”

“I have questions for you, too,” Lily said. The archbishop was possibly the foremost demonologist in the Catholic Church. “Dr. Fagin?” She held out her hand again.

“Clean sweep, eh?” He wiggled his eyebrows as if she’d suggested something naughty. “Why not?”

His palm was wide, the knuckles prominent. There was enough coarse hair on the back of his hand and fingers to have gotten him in trouble fifty years ago, when people still believed werewolves sprouted extra hair, even in human form.

She took it. For a split second she felt nothing, then magic itched along her palm. Which was weird. She’d never had any sort of delayed read before. What—

Dr. Fagin’s eyes rolled back in his head. He toppled slowly, like an old elm.

EIGHTEEN

RULE
grabbed Fagin on the way down, easing him to the floor. He looked over his shoulder at Lily. “You’re—?”

“Fine.” She knelt beside the fallen man, reaching for his neck to check the pulse.

Sherry grabbed Lily’s arm, aborting the gesture. “Don’t. He collapsed when you touched him.”

Lily frowned over her shoulder at the woman. “It wasn’t me. Sensitives can’t do magic—black, benign, or anywhere in between.”

Ito fidgeted beside Rule. “We should call someone. Call for help.”

“No . . . no need.” Fagin blinked up at them. “My. I’d wondered if that would happen.”

“What?” Lily snapped. Anxiety tended to piss her off.

“Yes, Xavier,” Sherry said. “What did happen?”

“Backlash. I’m a sensitive, too, you see.”

After a beat of silence, Lily said quietly, “I’ve never met another sensitive.”

“We are rare, aren’t we?” He sat up, brushing aside the archbishop’s protests. “No, no, I took no harm at all, thanks to Mr. Turner’s quick action. Fascinating!” He sounded as pleased as a kid with a new video game. “I remained aware, you see, merely stunned, rather like having my breath knocked out. Ms. Yu, perhaps we could touch again, see how long it takes for the dissonance to—”

“No,” Rule said.

“I don’t think so,” Lily said.

Ito frowned. “Is this appropriate? Our time is—”

“Fagin!” the archbishop snapped. “Pay attention! You can play with dissonance when the fate of the world isn’t hanging in the balance.”

“Of course.” He looked sheepish.

Sherry spoke quietly. “We’ve known each other for years, yet you never told me you were a sensitive.”

“No one knows,” he said simply. “Lily understands, I’m sure. It’s so tempting to put us to use. Not that I think you would have done so,” he said kindly to Sherry. “But silence becomes a habit. Would someone give me a hand up?”

Rule did that. The old man’s scent made him think of soda crackers and cream cheese: sweet and salty mixed. No whiff of fear.

“Well.” Fagin smiled vaguely at them. “I believe this is my coming-out party. I should have warned you, but I do love a surprise, and I wished to test my theory. I didn’t realize how dramatic the results would be.”

Rule was not happy. “Lily could have ended up on the floor instead of you.”

“Oh, no. Evidence—anecdotal, but sufficient—indicated hers was the greater Gift, though I didn’t realize how much greater. You are quite amazing, my dear.”

Lily didn’t look flattered. “So what happened?”

“Why, our Gifts duked it out, and yours won.”

“Is that supposed to be an explanation?” Sherry asked dryly.

“Come, Sherry, you aren’t thinking. You know what makes the sensitive Gift unique, don’t you? It cannot be controlled in any way.”

“Telepaths can’t control their Gift, either,” Ito said. “Or they wouldn’t go insane so often.”

“Fernando Baccardi, Ito?” Fagin’s eyebrows bounced up and down. “Yes, I see you know what I mean. Baccardi was a telepath in the last century,” he explained to the others, “who remained stable well into his forties because he could dial his Gift down. His ability supports my thesis that, before the Codex Arcanum was lost, it was possible to erect psychic blocks or shields.”

“Actually,” Lily said, “that’s still possible.”

“Is it? Is it, indeed?” His expression was all astonishment, but the eyes beneath those bushy eyebrows turned sharp. “I hope you’ll tell me more about that later. For now, I attempt to cling to the subject at hand. As I was saying, my Gift and Lily’s cannot be controlled—not consciously or unconsciously, not by ourselves or any outside agency. Intriguing, isn’t it? In addition, sensitives are said to be completely impervious to magic. That’s obviously not true, so—”

Lily broke in. “Wait a minute. What do you mean?”

“We know when we touch magic, don’t we? We may even know what kind of magic we’re touching—you do, I suspect . . . yes?” He was pleased by her nod. “I can’t always tell, myself. Still, this makes it clear there is some slight interaction between what we touch and our own magic, yet we remain untouched ourselves, so to speak. I’ve devised two models to explain this. First, we may possess a sort of permeable film of magic overlying an impenetrable core. The interaction would take place in that film. Second, we might be absorbing a tiny bit of power from whatever we touch and transmuting it, making it purely ours.”

Lily frowned. “Transmuting it, not blocking it?”

“You see the difference, don’t you? I’ll confess I’d favored the first model, but my reaction today tends to support the second one.”

The archbishop shook his head. “Fagin, try to remember that not all of us are familiar with your field.”

“Of course. Sorry. If the transmutation model is accurate, when I touch someone who possesses a fire Gift I suck up a tiny bit of fire magic and turn it into my own type of magic. I affect it—it doesn’t affect me. You can see why I preferred the other model.”

“This one raises as many questions as it answers.”

“Just so. Yet when I touched Lily, it seemed that my Gift tried to take in a bit of hers and couldn’t, because hers is so much stronger. My power snapped back at me like a rubber band.” He beamed at her. “What was it like for you?”