Eileen Wilks - Night Season

"Yeah?" Gan perked up, interested. "Show me. Not on me," she added hastily. "On the half-half, maybe. Or the councilor."

"Not now. How did you know the Edge people were coming here?"

"I'd like to know that, too," Lily Yu said.

Gan looked up at her. It made her feel funny to see Lily Yu again. Good-funny and bad-funny all mixed up.

While Lily Yu was in Dis, she had died. Well, part of her had, since she'd accidentally gotten herself split in two—which wasn't Gan's fault, or not all her fault, anyway. Being human, Lily Yu had a soul, so the part that died hooked up again with the part that lived, which was the Lily Yu sitting beside Gan now.

It was complicated, but Gan more or less understood what had happened—as much as she understood anything about souls, anyway. The confusing part was the way she felt right now, as if she'd eaten something bad, something she couldn't quite swallow all the way. "Most of you doesn't remember me, huh?"

"Some of me does."

The way Lily Yu said that made the tight, unswallowed feeling in Gan's throat feel better. "You recognized me. Even though I look a lot different now, you knew who I was."

"I did, right away. Are you going to answer Cynna's question?"

Gan stole a glance at the candy, but Cynna Weaver still held it out of reach. She sighed. "Some of it I can't tell, but—"

The councilor tried to interrupt, but Lily Yu told him she wanted to hear what her friend said. The councilor made a huffy sound. "Little orange one is being mostly demon still. Not is friend."

Gan liked the way Lily smiled at the councilor, as if she might hit him in a minute but wanted it to be a surprise. "Really? I wonder how you would know who my friends are." She looked at Gan. "How did you know about this?"

"The councilor is a Harazeed, see—that's one of the gnomish people. So the Hragash—they're the ones I've been staying with—knew he'd be coming, or at least the elders did, because they talk to each other. And it's time for my testing, so they sent me here so I could take the next step."

"Next step?"

"Going with you to get back the—"

The councilor burst out with a lot of words, some of them in the trade tongue, none of them in English, but Gan caught the gist, which was shut up , Gan looked at him. "I'm supposed to help you, but you are not in charge of me. I can tell them that part if I want to, and I do… if I get my chocolate."

Cynna handed her the candy bar. Gan grinned and ripped off the paper. She stuffed half of it in her mouth, closing her eyes to savor the experience, and spoke through the thick pleasure. "They lost something. They want you to Find it."

"Some reason you didn't want her to tell us that?" Lily Yu asked the councilor.

"No, no," he assured her. "Is that the loss is secret—as the Gan knows."

The chocolate was almost gone, melting away inside her mouth. Gan swallowed and opened her eyes. The councilor wasn't smiling now. She shrugged. "Not a secret from these two, is it?"

"Is for speaking only when is shielded. No shield here."

"Excuse me," Cynna Weaver said, "but do you mean 'shield' or 'wards'? Because we can do wards, but… well, when we speak of wards we're talking about spells to repulse specific intruders—fleas, demons, whatever. Usually they'll send a warning if something does get through, as well. But a shield spell would create a true barrier, one that keeps out everything, including the mental stuff."

The Harazeed bobbed his head. "Is meaning that kind, yes. Shield for everything’s keeping out."

"Sorry. We can't do those."

"Is needing shield! Wards is not closing off the farseeing, farhearing, the elementals, the… wards is not being enough!"

Lily Yu spoke. "Can you make a shield?"

The councilor talked to the others in upset murmurs. They used trade tongue, but spoke so fast and low Gan didn't catch all of it. When the gnome turned back to Lily Yu and shook his head, though, the negative matched what she'd heard. "This one is not able. Others not able. I is having knowledge of spell for shield, but is not having…" He waved his hands. "English is not having word for this. My magic wrong for making shield."

"But you know how to make one?"

"I know spell."

"Cynna?" Lily Yu's face was all shut down so Gan couldn't see what she was thinking.

"I don't know," the inky woman said. "An unknown spell… ee-way ant-cay oh-nay ut-whay it-way eally-ray uz-day."

"Hey!" Gan said, "What language is that?"

"Pig Latin."

Pig Latin? Gan had heard of Latin, but she didn't think pigs spoke it. Or any other language. She frowned and took another bite of candy, smaller this time, wanting to save some for later… a couple minutes later, anyway.

Lily Yu reached across Gan to pat Cynna Weaver's knee. "You can do spells, but for something like this… an unknown spell and all… well. Better call in the expert." She looked back at the councilor. "I know someone who can probably work that spell of yours."

The councilor looked relieved. Cynna Weaver didn't. She looked… what was the word? Oh, yes. Appalled.

Wouldn't it be interesting to find out why?

Gan popped the last of the chocolate in her mouth and wiggled with pleasure. She was having so much fun. Even without the windows.

Cullen could walk without crutches now, if he had to. It had been nearly five weeks since a giant flying monster from hell had chowed down on his foot and related bits. He didn't heal as fast as some lupi—his talents lay in other directions—but he'd finished regrowing the lower leg and his ankle now ended in a foot bulb, a knobby projection with everything a foot might need. It was curled up in an unfootlike shape, but the parts were all there.

But it hurt like hell to walk on the blasted thing. Tarsal and metatarsal bones, itty-bitty phalanges, and all those tendons were curled around one another, the bones still soft, nothing finished, nothing in its proper position. So he swung along on crutches beside the Fed who'd been designated to bring him to some super secret location in the bowels of FBI Headquarters, aka the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building, feeling foolish and annoyed.

Make that pissed. Lily gives him a call… and he'd answered his phone, hadn't he? Okay, maybe that was because he wanted to know how the shopping with Cynna had gone, whether the dippy woman had finally deigned to acknowledge reality. But he had answered.

And what does she do? Asks him to drop everything and come to this big, ugly block of a building named for the asshole who ran the FBI back when lupi were pretty much "shoot on sight" to the Feds. Wouldn't tell him why, either. She gave him this "can't tell you on an unsecured line" bullshit.

In spite of that, he'd agreed. Lily didn't make a habit of yanking him around, which meant something was up. He wanted to know what. But he'd been in the middle of an elaborate setup for a spell, an important one.

Cullen had the most impenetrable mental shields on the planet. They weren't some freakish natural ability, but something that had been given him—or done to him—while he was unconscious last September. It was driving him crazy. He possessed incredibly sophisticated spells, but passively. He didn't know the spells, couldn't cast them or learn from them. That was intolerable. He'd spent weeks creating a spell he hoped would read and copy the ones that had been used on him.

Of course, his shields were designed not to be tampered with, and reading them was akin to tampering. This would be his third attempt. He thought he had the parameters down, but only the casting would tell.

Lily knew all that. She knew how much this mattered. So when he'd told her he would come in tomorrow, he'd expected her to accept that.