Eileen Wilks: Death Magic

“Oh. Well, unless Rule has suddenly developed a precog Gift to rival Ruben’s, me wearing agate tonight was a coincidence. You mentioned a theory.”

“Also intrusive personal questions. This one, however, is not too intrusive. Tell me about the ghost you saw.”

Lily described it briefly. “. . . so this wasn’t like your experience. Misty form, no color, just a shape, and as far as I know, I’ve got no personal connection to the deceased.”

“Hmm. Have you ever died?”

“I . . .” For several heartbeats Lily didn’t know what to say. The story behind “yes” was both complicated and not for public consumption, since it involved the opening of a hellgate. “That’s not a question I get asked every day. I’m going to say yes, but I can’t give any details.”

“Excellent.” He beamed. “The stories of ghost sightings by non-mediums that I’ve collected fall into three categories. In one, there’s an intimate connection between the corporeal person and the ghost. In the second, the ghost itself appears to be responsible, having acquired the ability to manifest itself visually. For whatever reason,” he added, “English haunts seem to be especially adept at such manifestations. The third category, however, is composed of people who have had what is popularly called a near-death experience.”

Lily took another swig of Diet Coke. She was uncomfortable, yet fascinated. “I have reason to believe that my, ah, my near-death experience . . .” She shook her head. Near was the wrong word. Part of her absolutely had died, but that part had been embodied separately from the rest of her at the time. “My own experience leaves me sort of open to spiritual stuff that—”

“Fagin, you’re monopolizing . . . oh, dear.” Deborah Brooks grimaced prettily. “I’ve interrupted.”

“A beautiful woman is never an interruption.”

Deborah was that. Her beauty was the classic English sort, with skin like milk and soft brown hair bobbed just above her shoulders. Her eyes were large and heavily lashed; her features were perfectly symmetrical in a heart-shaped face. Men wouldn’t stop and stare when they saw her on the street. They’d hunt frantically for a puddle they could throw their cloaks over. Though given the scarcity of cloaks these days, they might have to settle for casting a T-shirt in the mud.

That perfectly symmetrical face produced a stiff little smile. “Thank you.”

“Deborah!” Fagin swooped down upon her like a genial bear, seizing her shoulders and giving her a loud, smacking kiss on the lips. “Don’t do that!”

A laugh startled itself out of Deborah. “You’re impossible!”

“Merely highly unlikely. Your mother isn’t here tonight. You can accept the compliment, punch me—not in the face, please—say, ‘yes, I know,’ tell me to stuff it, ask me to jet away to the Caribbean with you for days of sun-drenched pleasure and nights of madness—”

Deborah was laughing. “Oh, stop it. I’m too busy for the last, too inhibited to tell anyone to stuff it, and I couldn’t possibly just agree with you!”

“I observe that you’ve kept open the option of punching me.” He patted her arm. “Good girl. Lily, I cede you to our hostess for now, while reserving the right to pester you again later.”

“So noted.”

Fagin ambled off. Deborah’s smile lingered as she turned to Lily. “I was sent to fetch you, actually. There’s someone Rule would like you to meet.”

Automatically Lily glanced over at the swimming pool fifty feet away. That was a tell, though Deborah wouldn’t recognize it. Lily always knew where Rule was. That was one of the handiest things about the mate bond. At the moment, he was talking with two men—one tall and dark-skinned, wearing khakis and a yellow polo shirt; the other short, slim, and dark-haired with a trim little mustache. He wore jeans with a white shirt and a sports jacket. Lily was pretty sure he hadn’t joined in the softball game.

It was odd for Rule to have her “fetched.” Was there a status thing going on? “I already know Croft, so it must be the guy in the sports jacket.”

“Dennis Parrott. He’s Senator Bixton’s chief of staff.”

Lily grimaced.

“I know,” Deborah said sympathetically, “but it can be useful to get to know your enemies socially.”

Lily glanced at her, surprised. “You see Dennis Parrott as an enemy?”

Rosy color washed over that soft, pale skin. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?”

Deborah pursed her lips. “I don’t know, but I shouldn’t. Fagin has an absolute genius for getting me to let my guard down, but once I do, there’s no telling what might come out of my mouth. Never mind. It’s true that Rule would like you to meet Mr. Parrott, but I had another reason for seeking you out.” She took a breath like she was about to jump from the high dive. “I wanted to apologize.”

“Apology accepted, but what are you apologizing for?”

“For the way I acted when we met. I . . .” That soft color rose in her cheeks again. “I wouldn’t shake your hand. I wouldn’t talk. I just nodded and hurried away. You must have thought I was snubbing you.”

That’s pretty much what she’d thought, all right.

“I’m sorry.” Deborah held her hand out.

Lily shook it, smiling at what she learned from that touch. Also from relief. She hadn’t wanted Ruben to be married to a stuck-up bitch. “You weren’t snubbing me. You’re shy.” Not just wary or self-protective, which was learned behavior. Shyness seemed to be more innate.

“The experts are calling it social anxiety disorder these days, but I like the old word better. Yes, I’m shy.”

“That must be difficult for a teacher.”

A sudden smile lit her face. “Teaching is different. It’s helped me get over myself to some extent. These days I bumble along fairly well most of the time, but now and then I just seize up, like I did with you. Then I torture myself about how stupid or cold or awful I must have seemed. Shyness is really very selfish, very inward.”

“So’s grief, but we don’t blame people for feeling it.”

Deborah blinked. “I like you,” she said, as if startled by the notion. She tipped her head. “When we shook hands I expected you to say something about my, well . . . my little Gift.”

“I don’t speak of what I learn from touch unless there’s a compelling reason, not unless I know it’s okay. Some people dislike having others know.” Earth magic always felt warm to Lily, warm and sandy and slow. A major Earth Gift felt weighty as well, as if the bones and boulders of the earth were pressing up from the sandy surface. Deborah’s Gift wasn’t major, but it was clear and vivid, the sign of someone who used a Gift regularly.

“I am a little uncomfortable discussing it,” Deborah admitted as they started for the pool area. “It’s not as if my parents were Orthodox. They aren’t very religious at all, but I think they see magic as cheating. Certainly they consider it distasteful, not something one should speak of in public. I was raised to keep my ability secret.”

“So was I.” Lily had known Ruben was Jewish, but had the fuzzy notion he was a Jew by heritage more than belief—maybe because the subject of religion had never come up. She hadn’t known that Deborah was Jewish in any sense. She looked so very English. “Back when I was with homicide, I never told anyone I was a sensitive. That was partly because I’d been raised not to speak of it, but also I worried about being used to out someone, you know?”

Deborah nodded. “Torquemada.”

“Among others, yeah.” Sensitives had been used before, during, and after the Purge to find those of the Blood as well as those “tainted” by magic, but Spain’s Grand Inquisitor was the sensitive everyone had heard about. As mass murderers go, he was outranked by Hitler, Lenin, and Pol Pot, but he’d tortured way more than the nine or ten thousand he’d had burned at the stake. “It took a while to get used to being out, but I like it better this way. Lots better.”