Eileen Wilks - Mortal Danger

This included the entire wedding party, much to her mother’s distress. Susan and her new husband had been allowed to leave—the only ones, so far, to receive permission. Lily’s parents were trying to soothe their guests, and Grandmother had summoned Li Quin to take her home. The local cops would try to stop her, of course, but Lily was putting her money on Grandmother.

It was weird, sitting on this side of the local-federal fence. “So Croft’s in Virginia already?” Lily referred to Karonski’s partner.

“On his way. It’s a major outbreak, the biggest in decades.”

“Any fatalities?”

“Two confirmed. The nasty little shits caused a major pileup on the interstate by riding a trucker’s windshield.” He brought two full mugs back to the table with him. Today’s suit was brown, wrinkled, and missing a button. His tie suggested he’d had something with ketchup for lunch. “Here.”

“Thanks.” Lily wrapped her hands around the steaming mug and took a sip. Caffeine had analgesic properties, right? It was bound to help.

“What about you?” Rule asked the agent. “You’re leaving, too?”

“I’ll be heading there as soon as I’ve got things lined out here.”

“I don’t know much about imps. They’ve always been rare on this coast. Were they summoned?”

“No one summons imps on purpose. They can’t be controlled. But a poorly executed spell can call them up instead of a demon, and most summoning spells suck. That’s one thing lost during the Purge that I hope we never rediscover.” Karonski took a sip of coffee, sighed with pleasure, and added, “More often, though, imps bleed through some weak place between the realms. We don’t know why. Not usually in such numbers, though.”

“Hell’s restless lately,” Cynna commented.

Lily looked at her. “You would know about that?”

“Not directly. I’m righteous these days. But I hear things.”

Lily knew that the section of the FBI’s Magical Crimes Division called the Unit was more flexible than the rest of the Bureau about any less-than-respectable skills its agents possessed. They had to be open-minded. The Unit couldn’t function without the Gifted—witness her own hasty recruitment. And over the years, the Gifted had found different paths for their talents, paths often cloaked in secrecy. The Purge had put an end to making such explorations openly.

But a Dizzy who worked for the FBI?

“All right,” Karonski said, “I’ve got a plane to catch, and Lily here has to go get her head examined—yes, that is an order,” he said directly to her. “So let’s make it quick. What happened?”

“I saw Helen.”

Karonski spilled his coffee. “You’re worrying me.”

“It wasn’t really Helen. I know that. But I’m not talking about a resemblance, either. This woman looked exactly like her—body, face, hair, everything was exactly the same.”

Karonski frowned. “A twin?”

“That was one possibility. Or she was an illusion. Or I was going nuts. I didn’t think I was crazy, but I couldn’t see any way to prove or disprove that right away. The other two possibilities meant she’d been planted to get my attention or Rule’s. Since I knew it wasn’t an illusion—”

“Wait a minute,” Cynna said. “How could you know that?”

Lily raised her eyebrows at Karonski.

“Cynna just flew in. I hit the high points on the way here, but she doesn’t know much more than she read in the papers after the big raid.”

Okay, so Lily had to explain herself—something she wasn’t used to doing. Until last month, she could have counted on the fingers of one hand the number of people who knew about her Gift. “I can be fooled, but not by magic. I’m a sensitive.”

Cynna’s lips pursed as if she’d bitten into something sour. “A sensitive.”

“I never outed people.” It was a refrain Lily had used a lot lately. Too often, sensitives had been used by witch hunters both official and otherwise to sniff out the Gifted or those of the Blood. Most of that was in the past… but not very far in the past. “It came in handy sometimes in my work, but I was with homicide, not the X-Squad. You going to have a problem working with me?”

“I can handle it. Think you can handle working with me?”

“Let’s see.” Lily held out her hand.

To her credit, Weaver didn’t hesitate to offer a quick, businesslike shake. Then she cocked her head to one side. “So what did you pick up about me?”

“Not about you. I’m no empath. I read magic, not people.” She took a moment to gather her impressions from the brief contact. “You’ve a strong Gift,” she said at last. “And complex, like lots of fingerprints on top of each other. I haven’t run across your brand of magic before.”

Weaver showed her teeth in a smile. “There aren’t many like me around.”

Rule shifted in his chair. “Let’s get back to this woman who looked like Helen. It wouldn’t be hard for an uninvited guest to crash the party.”

“No. But how did she know there was a party to crash?”

“That’s rather my point. You suspected she’d been planted to get your attention. That meant they’d learned enough about you to get her here, at your sister’s wedding. So naturally you followed her.” His fingers drummed once. “Did it occur to you she might be bait?”

“Of course she was bait. That didn’t mean I could ignore her. Harlowe’s still missing. So’s that damned staff. This Helen look-alike had to be connected to him, it, or both, and someone knew enough to send her to my sister’s wedding. What was I supposed to do—let that link walk away?”

“You could have come to me for backup.”

“If I’d hunted you up, I could have lost her.”

“You lost her anyway.”

Because that was patently true, she didn’t argue. “Maybe I miscalled it, but I’m the only one who can’t be affected by that staff, and I didn’t want to take the chance. If it had been there…” She started to shake her head, winced, and turned to Karonski. “She went to the ladies’ room, I followed, and that’s the last I know. Something clobbered me as soon as I stepped inside.”

“And locked you in there,” Rule said. “Then vanished.”

Karonski’s forehead knitted. “What do you mean?”

“The restrooms are in the middle of the building. No windows. No way in or out except through that one door—and it was bolted on the inside.”

“Get real,” Cynna said. “A locked room mystery?”

Lily was tired, hurting, and—if she was honest with herself—scared. They’d struck at her in the midst of her family. How had they known where and when to find her? “Are those tattoos for show, or do you actually know something about magic?”

“I know enough to not buy into vanishing villains. Invisibility was impossible before the Purge. It sure hasn’t become possible now.”

“The bolt,” Lily snapped. “Whoever knocked me out didn’t have to disappear. She just had to spell the bolt into moving from the other side of the door.”

Cynna’s mouth opened—and closed. She grimaced. “My stupid. Sorry.”

Anger was not good for concussions. Even minor ones. The throbbing increased, bringing on a wave of nausea. Lily rode out the wave, then said, “We need to—hey!”

Rule had pulled her chair back from the table. “You’ve played macho cop long enough. We’ll be going now. Abel, good to see you again. Cynna, you, too.”

“Wait just one minute.” But when that gentle, inexorable hand propelled Lily to her feet, the room hit the spin cycle. She closed her eyes and waited for it to firm up again. “Okay, okay. I’ll even let you drive.”

“The ambulance crew is still here. I told them to wait.”