Mortal Ties (19 page)

“His hunch didn’t include why, though. It doesn’t mean Friar’s involved.” She drummed
the fingers of her free hand on her thigh. “I’ve got two good witnesses, or will have.
Your brother and what’s-his-name…the new Laban Rho.”

“Tony Romano.”

“Right. Tony and Jasper both had contact with whoever commissioned this theft.” She
gave him a quick glance. “I’m assuming that information is part of this deal your
brother wants to make.”

“I think of him as my
alius
kin.”

“Okay. I think of him as your brother.”

He didn’t respond. Eventually Lily would understand, but she didn’t now, and he wasn’t
inclined to explain while they had an audience.

After a brief pause she went on. “But whatever label we give Jasper, he knows things
we need to know. Talking has to be part of whatever deal we make.”

“Obviously. Information is all he has to offer, if what he said about the device being
stolen from him is true. I don’t know what he wants in return, but I’d guess that
staying out of prison is involved.” He paused. “I would prefer that he not go to prison.”

“I’ll bear that in mind. I think I should do the dealing.”

His eyebrows lifted. “I’m quite capable of—”

“Yes, but it gets you two off to a difficult start if you have to be a hard-ass.”

“Considering that our relationship began with him stealing from the clan, I’d say
we’re already well into ‘difficult.’ ”

“Then let’s not make it worse. Besides, you can’t agree to grant him immunity from
prosecution, which he’ll likely insist on.”

He suspected that technically she couldn’t, either, but she could neglect to arrest
Machek. She must think she could keep this under the table. He considered a moment
longer, then nodded. “Am I supposed to be the good cop, then?”

“You can stand there looking mysterious and vaguely scary. You said he wouldn’t talk
about what he wants until we get there.”

He nodded, toying with the ring on her finger. His ring.

“Can you give me your impression of him?”

“He knows what he wants, even if he wasn’t willing to tell me. He was calm, in control,
when he might have been panicky or angry about losing something he’d gone to great
trouble to obtain.” He thought a bit more and added, “He’s educated, or knows how
to sound like it.”

“He’s got a degree in art history and owns a small gallery.”

Art history. Why did that surprise him? He’d known about the man’s existence for less
than twenty-four hours. Surely that wasn’t enough time to develop preconceptions.
“Last night I wasn’t ready to learn about him. I am now.”

She cocked her head. “I’ve got the FBI’s file on him, plus some recent stuff Arjenie
dug up. You want to see it?”

The FBI didn’t keep files on everyone. “Do you mean a file or a rap sheet?”

“No rap sheet. He’s never been arrested, but several years ago he was a person of
interest in a theft at the National Gallery in D.C. That made it an FBI matter,
see—National Gallery, federal law. They never had enough evidence to make an arrest,
but it’s clear the lead agent had him picked for the perp. He put together the file.”

“He is a pro, then. As you suspected.”

“Looks like it, though there’s—”

Cullen interrupted. “What was stolen?”

She looked at him. “That was odd. Only one item went missing—a thirteenth-century
chalice, solid gold with precious gems. No one could figure out why he targeted that
one item. It was worth plenty, sure, but there were other things he could have grabbed
that were worth more.”

“No, there weren’t,” Cullen said.

“What do you know about this?”

“That chalice was an artifact.”

“An artifact?” Rule said, startled. Artifacts were major magic—so major no one on
Earth knew how to make them. It took an adept to make an artifact, and the knowledge
had been lost even before the Purge. “What did it do?”

“No one knows. At least I never heard a whisper that anyone had figured it out, and
I sure as hell couldn’t. I studied the damn thing for days, but all that showed was
the trigger—and that was locked.”

“Locked,” Lily repeated.

“
Locked
as in keyed to someone who has probably been dead for a few hundred years, so no
one could use it. Resetting the key would take knowledge we just don’t have.”

“And you studied it for days?”

“That was about three months before it was stolen. And no,” Cullen added with preemptive
irritation, “I didn’t have anything to do with that. Not from any moral objection
on my part, but I couldn’t afford Umbra.”

“Umbra.”

“That’s the name your thief goes by. Or used to. Kind of pretentious, isn’t it?’

“I don’t know,” she said dryly. “What does it mean?”

“It’s the scientific name for one part of a shadow. Anyway, everyone assumed Umbra
was the one who took the chalice because it was such a slick, high-dollar job. There
was a lot of speculation about who his client might have been, but it was bullshit.
No one really knew anything.”

“Who’s ‘everyone’?”

Cullen waved vaguely. “People. You know.”

“No, actually, I don’t. But I’d like to.”

“I’m not going to tell you about them. First, it was seven years ago, and I don’t
remember exactly who I talked to. Second, if any of them had an inkling I mentioned
them to someone official, they’d never talk to me again. And that would be bad.”

“Are they other sorcerers?”

“Did you hear me say I wouldn’t tell you about them? I could’ve sworn I heard those
words come out of my mouth.” Cullen sighed. “I feel a bit better knowing it was Umbra
who got through my wards. Not a lot, but some. He was supposed to be the best.”

Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “Was?”

“Two or three years ago word went out that he wasn’t taking jobs anymore. Rumor was
divided about why. Some said he’d retired. Some said he’d died. Looks like he was
just on sabbatical.”

Lily made a note. “Huh. Guess we’ll have the chance to ask him. How did people reach
Umbra to hire him?”

Cullen considered the question a moment. “I can tell you that much. Here in the States
he used an agent, a big fat guy named Hugo. I met him once on an unrelated matter.
Back then—this was maybe five years ago—he hung out at a dive called Rats in San Francisco.
He’s Gifted—can’t tell you which one because I don’t remember. Maybe one of the Air
Gifts. Caucasian, around fifty, bald or else he shaved his head. Tattoo of a lightning
bolt on his forehead. Looked like prison work.”

“Last name?”

“No idea. He went by Hugo.”

“How big was he?”

“About Rule’s height and maybe three hundred pounds.”

“Okay, I’ll see if Arjenie can do anything with that.” She
turned to Rule. “I need to ask Cullen some more questions before we get to the airport.
Want to read that file now?”

No. “Yes.”

She bent and dug a folder out of the case that held her laptop. It would have been
easier to send the material to his iPad, but that left an electronic trail. Technically
Lily had the authority to share information with a consultant; technically Rule could
be called a consultant. But there was always the chance that someone would decide
to make an issue of it.

He accepted the folder and opened it. The first page was a brief bio.

Two years and nine months after she handed me to my father and walked away and never
looked back…

Rule stared at the page, his eyes dry and unseeing, his mind blank save for one thought.

Dead. She was dead.

L
ILY
did not watch Rule read the file she’d handed him. She wanted to, but she was pretty
sure that was a bad idea. When you’re raw you don’t want people studying your reactions,
even if you’ve convinced yourself you’re just fine.

Maybe especially then. She leaned forward and pulled her notebook and pen out of her
purse. “Okay, Cullen, I need you to tell me more about the prototype. You’re not the
only one working on the problem—everyone from mega-corporations to individual practitioners
are giving it a shot. But this is the first really promising device for shielding
tech from magic, right?”

“Wrong.”

“You said it worked. You said that several times. That isn’t promising?”

“I mean that it’s not a shield.”

“But it’s supposed to protect tech from magic.”

He nodded. “Naturally you think ‘protect’ equals ‘shield.’ I did, too, at first. So
has everyone else. The problem is, the only way to absolutely, positively shield against
every type of magic is to be you.”

She blinked. “Ah—be a touch sensitive, you mean?” Able to feel magic, but impervious
to it.

“Right. The first thing you need to know is that no substance shields really well
against raw magic. Earth comes closer than most, but it’s too varied to shield predictably.
And it takes a lot of dirt to do much good.”

“Raw magic is what comes from nodes.”

“Right. Ambient magic is at least ninety percent raw. A small percentage is elemental,
but the vast majority is raw—unless you’re in an old forest, of course, but that’s
a special case, and there’s not much tech deep in the Sequoia National Forest, so
it doesn’t matter. Now, some substances do offer minimal shielding, like the silk
case you use for your phone, but they’re ineffective near a node, a ley line, or even
the ocean. Or if there’s even a small surge. We don’t get the kind of power blasts
we did when the Turning hit,” he added, “but there are frequent small surges, and
the level of ambient magic continues to rise.”

Rule looked up from the folder. He was on the second page, she noted. “A company came
up with a polymer that showed promise initially, but they can’t make it work longer
than…what was it, thirty minutes?”

“Thirty max,” Cullen agreed. “Theory suggests that no substance can shield well against
raw magic for long because matter is, by definition, not magically inert.”

Lily’s eyebrows went up. “By definition? No, wait—don’t explain that.” Once Cullen
got going on theory it was hard to shut him up.

His grin flashed. “I’ll spare you. Mind, not everyone agrees with that theory, but
most do, which is why most everyone is looking to combine some type of natural shielding
with shaped magic. Charms, in other words. I won’t go into all the reasons that’s
so hard to do, but one big problem is that tech isn’t very useful if it lacks input
and output. You can build an underground bunker and shield the hell out of it and
be pretty sure the computer inside is protected, but as soon as you hook that computer
up to something
else—even if it’s a wireless connection—you’ve breached the shield.”

“But you’re not going to go into that.” Her hand moved automatically, jotting down
notes that would help her remember later:
even wireless = shield breach.

“Right. Because the real drawback to creating a shield isn’t the difficulty, though
that’s huge. It’s that even if you succeed, all you’ve done is deflect the magic.
Say you’re Delta Airlines and the shielding on your big 747 deflected the hell out
of a magic surge, but that deflected power hit the cell tower you were flying over
and now the phone company’s suing you. Or maybe it hit a small plane that couldn’t
afford fancy shielding, and that plane crashed.” He shook his head. “Shields are not
the answer.”

“You found another answer.”
Shields = deflected magic = collateral damage.

“Damn straight. Based on you and dragons.”

Her forehead wrinkled. Dragons were magical sponges. So was she, to a much lesser
degree. “You want to soak up the magic instead of deflecting it?”

“Soak it up and store it…that’s the way to go. We do know something about storing
magic. Not as much as the sidhe, but something. Enough to get me started, but I wasn’t
making much headway until I started playing around with truth charms. You know that
Arjenie burns them out?”

“That’s what you said, yeah. Something about her Gift overloads them.” Benedict’s
new Chosen had a rare Gift, a variant of the sidhe ability to cast illusions that
let her go undetected. It wasn’t true invisibility. It was better, because it also
baffled hearing, scent, and most wards.

“I was curious about that, and so was she, so we experimented a bit. We figured it
out, too. Her Gift is essentially the ability to lie to the mind. Even when she isn’t
actively lying, the kind of magic she uses overloads any truth charm touching her.”

“That makes sense.”
Arj. magic mental lie—overloads trth charms,
her pen noted. She snuck a glance at Rule. He was on the last page, but she wasn’t
sure he was reading it.
He seemed to be off in some private world, staring at the words without seeing them.

“But the cool part is what that meant. It meant the charms were soaking up some of
her magic. They had to be, or they wouldn’t burn out. Only a teensy trace, sure, but
when I looked into it, I found that truth charms sample a trace of whatever magic
is around—including raw magic.”