"Little?" she said, indignant. "You think it's okay to hit a woman as long as you don't damage her too much?"
"No, I think you're deliberately misunderstanding me."
She looked away. Her stomach still felt unhappy. She was making a big deal out of this and didn't know why. Time to change the subject.
Over at the house, the guards—human and wolf—were watching them. "You heard the bodyguards show up. Why weren't they out front earlier? And why did you go talk to them?"
He snorted. "I already knew they were around—Frederick's good, but the breeze wasn't with him."
"That wasn't what I asked."
He waved that off. "Personal business. Victor's a great believer in passing for human as much as possible, and knife-wielding toughs don't fit the image, so he kept them out of sight at first and had Sabra answer the door. I'm sure Merilee was supposed to stay in her room."
"You heard her? Yes, of course you did. But I still don't get it. I knew Frey was a Rho. I was expecting guards."
"Most humans don't even know the word Rho, much less what it means. He was expecting a regular FBI agent who'd buy the scene he set—a nice old man, grieving but handling it well enough. No threat. Then I showed up, and it turned out you might become the next Nokolai Rhej. Blew his stage-setting all to pieces. He kept to his role, but he'd lost control of the situation, and he knew it. When he realized he had to let you hunt on his land, he crashed. He's down to a fingernail's worth of sanity, and gnawing on that."
"You could have warned me ahead of time about this heres thing."
"Am I a precog? I didn't know Victor was in trouble until we got here. Smelled it then, but that was a bit late for warnings."
She thought of the way Frey's daughter had turned pale and left when she learned he was having trouble with the heres valos. "He's a danger to those around him."
"We can't help them. What are you going to do about Timms?"
She chewed on her bottom lip. If she served her warrant she could insist on Timms's presence, but that challenge to his authority might push Victor over the edge. "Who gets hurt if Victor goes round the bend? Us, or the people around him?"
"Anyone. Everyone. It's impossible to predict."
Great. "I'm going to do a full cast, see if the demon's anywhere near."
"There's a node here," he warned her. "Keyed to Leidolf, so it's not usable by anyone else, and it's small. But we're standing close. Will that distort your cast?"
"Shouldn't. If I don't pick up anything, we'll come back tomorrow, get someone to take us to the site of the attack. We don't have a description of this demon. Maybe it wasn't like the dead one, and that's why I can't Find it."
"And if you do pick up something?"
"We hunt." She glanced at the car. "All of us. Timms is an ass, but he's a top shooter and those things are hard to kill. I've got a spell that works, but it takes everything I've got. I'd like backup."
"What am I, Swiss cheese? Alex and company won't let Timms out of the car."
"Alex is the boss guard? Well, he might not like it, but what can he do?"
"Kill us, if Victor tells them to."
"So we don't tell Victor."
"Alex will."
Shit. This was why she didn't like being in charge. Sometimes there weren't any good options, and you had to pick one anyway. "Can you fire an M72 LAW?"
"Does it have a trigger?"
"Never mind. Are you armed?"
"With my wits and charm. I hate guns."
"But you can use one if you have to. Guess what? You have to. We've got an M-16 in the trunk, and it does have a trigger. What about your diamond?"
"Not recharged yet."
Yet? She mentally added one more question to the "when we're alone" list. "I'm going to do a full cast now."
He nodded and turned his back on her.
It wasn't rudeness. He was facing out while she faced in, watching her back so she could concentrate on her cast. That was one of the things she actually liked about Cullen. She didn't have to explain herself when it came to magic. He knew.
Working magic typically requires three things: knowledge, focus, and power. Power could be innate, pooled with other practitioners, drawn from natural sources, or stolen—though that was dark magic, what most people thought of when they thought about sorcery. Focus was learned. Knowledge usually meant knowing the spell to be performed; with a Find, that meant using the kilingo for the target.
With a quick cast, Cynna just had to give her attention to the object she sought. Doing a full cast meant putting a lot of power into her search. For that, she needed her focus crystal clear.
She said a quick Our Father, bent, untied her shoes, and removed them and her socks.
The ground was cold and prickly with dried grass. She closed her eyes and shook her arms until her fingertips tingled. She sent that tingling up her arms, down her spine, tracing the magic that coursed over her skin, attached yet never entirely still. Like fur, she thought, always ruffling a bit in the breeze.
Some of the intricate tattoos stored spells. Those were the kilingo, and they took days or weeks to perfect and imprint, and would take at least as long to alter or remove. Most were kielezo, patterns lifted from something or someone she'd Found or might need to Find. Kielezo were much quicker to imprint, change, or remove.
The kielezo for the dead demon was on her right shoulder blade. The skin there felt tight with residual power from the cast she'd started in the car and never finished. She fed more power into it… and began to move.
Only her feet at first. She flexed her knees and lifted one heel, then the other, keeping the balls of her feet earthed. Slowly, then faster, her heels thumped out a rhythm as old as Africa, letting it build, catching her power up into it and lifting the essence of the kielezo from her shoulder to thrum in the air all around her. Her arms began to lift, too—hip high, waist, chest. She breathed the pattern in.
When her arms were over her head, with her heels still pounding the earth, she searched. And Found.
Not an exact match, but the click of connection was unmistakable. She felt it in her stomach, her palms, the lifting of all the tiny hairs on her arms. Her eyes opened.
She was facing the house.
SIXTEEN
"SHIT!" Cynna snatched up her tote and kicked into a run, not taking the time to put her shoes back on.
"Where?" Cullen demanded, loping along easily beside her. "Where is it? How far?"
"The house. It's in the house."
"Can't be. Even if I didn't smell it when we were inside, Victor or his guards would have. Behind the house, maybe."
"No. It's on the second floor." That's what made her so sure it was in the house—it was that way, and the right distance, and well above ground level. "The connection feels odd, but it's clear enough."
"What kind of odd?"
"Finding is kind of like tying a rope between me and what I've searched for. The texture of this rope is funny, a little like when I search for a living person and Find a ghost. But not exactly, and anyway, demons don't throw ghosts."
"Maybe it's dashtu. That might explain… no, it wouldn't," he said, arguing with himself before she could. "I still smelled the one that chased me when it was dashtu."
"You were chased by a demon? When? Where?"
"Later. They aren't going to let us in." He kept pace with her even as he told her it was pointless. "They won't believe you.
Demons stink. Even a human could smell one if you were close enough."
"Maybe this one's using deodorant."
"I'd have seen it. I think. If it were in someone, I should've seen it."
"So maybe it's in someone you didn't see. Get Timms."
"They for damned sure won't let him in. If that odd texture you mentioned…" His voice trailed away. He stopped. "Holy Mother."