“Inside,” Mullins repeated, scowling.
Sherry smiled at him. “Your name is Doug, I think?”
Mullins blinked and looked conflicted, no doubt trying to resist the urge to smile back. Satan himself would find it hard to resist Sherry’s smile. “Doug Mullins, yes, ma’ am.”
She patted his arm. “Not everyone is able to offer the proverbial spoonful of sugar, but we can at least avoid pouring vinegar over everything.” She looked at Lily. “Doug is guarding the door. I’m afraid he’s been a bit abrasive, but he does have orders.”
“I guess I do, too.” Lily gave her a nod and headed for the closed door.
The conference room was large enough for a table that could seat up to thirty people. At the moment it held four: Drummond, a senior MCD agent named Mike Brassard whom Lily knew slightly, and two others who were strangers to her. There was a whiteboard with crime scene pics tacked up and a console table with a coffeepot, cups, and fixings.
Lily headed for the coffee.
Drummond stopped talking to the woman beside him—brown and blue, pale skin, glasses, five-five, one sixty, wrinkled gray suit. She looked to be on the far side of forty. “You’re late,” he told Lily.
“It’s 8:01, so yes, I am.” She poured herself a cup. It smelled fresh.
“I want you to check everyone in this room in your own special way. Do it now.”
Lily sighed, put down her coffee, and walked up to the dumpy woman beside Drummond. A quick handshake confirmed her lack of a Gift or any trace of death magic. She did the same with a bright-eyed Asian man of around thirty and with Brassard, the MCD agent.
“Well?” Drummond said.
“No death magic. I should check Ruben Brooks.”
“No.”
“It wouldn’t prove anything, but it would be information.”
“You aren’t just his subordinate. You went to his damn party Saturday. You won’t go anywhere near him during the course of this investigation.”
Her lips tightened. She went to retrieve her coffee.
“Feed your caffeine jones later. We’re going to be working with a large team. I want them all cleared before we start. Doug will send ’em in one at a time. Stand by the door and check them out. If you find death magic, don’t say anything. Signal by rubbing your hands together. Nguyen, stand by to take anyone down who doesn’t pass.”
It was a good plan, minimizing the confusion if she did find anything suspicious. Lily nodded but said, “My clearing someone this way only means they haven’t worked death magic recently. I can’t even say how recently.”
“It’s information.”
Hard to argue with what she’d just said, but she wanted to. Drummond affected her that way. “I’ve got a theory about one of the perps. The one who stuck the knife in Bixton.”
“Make it quick.”
She explained Cullen’s idea about the killer being a null—though she didn’t use that term, which some considered derogatory.
He grunted in what might have been surprise. “I’ll call on you to repeat that later. Right now, get started at the door. I want to get this thing under way.”
Lily shook nineteen hands. No death magic. One agent had a minor Gift—physical empathy—which surprised Lily. It was an unusual Gift and not one the man could have remained unaware of, as it essentially provided him with another sense. Physical empathy, unlike true empathy, allowed someone to sense physical objects directly in a way that had no clear analogue to the usual senses.
The agent met her gaze when she shook his hand and said nothing. Lily didn’t, either. She refused to out people. But she made a mental note of his name and face: Don Richardson, European ancestry, early forties, five-ten, brown and brown, with a small scar just under his right ear.
Lily knew some of the people, like Paul from Research and Hannah from CSI. And she knew the last person in, who had a minor patterning Gift. Lily already knew about that. She’d recommended Anna Sjorensen for training when they met last month. Sjorensen had been delegated to Headquarters recently so she could receive that training; she’d be transferred to the Unit once she’d completed it.
Working in the Unit was Anna Sjorensen’s dream. Lily gave her a smile. “Good to be working with you.”
Sjorensen nodded back, very serious. She was always very serious. “This is a bad business. I’m not sure why I’m here, though.”
“If I say to fetch coffee, someone’ll file a damn suit against me,” Drummond said sourly, “and Erin will bean me. You’re here to do as you’re told. Sit down and let’s start.”
Drummond introduced Mullins and the three people who’d been in the room first, calling them Team One: Mike Brassard, Erin Hoffsteader, and Sam Nguyen. Each of the three would be in charge of a different aspect of the investigation. He said he’d summarize the status of the investigation and call on some of them for reports after Ms. O’Shaunessy gave them her findings. She would take questions, but he wanted to let her get some sleep, so “keep the questions pertinent.”
Maybe the man wasn’t always an asshole.
Sherry gave a quick précis of what her coven had learned. Yes, the dagger held considerable death magic, and there were traces on Bixton’s body as well. They had also confirmed the presence of a spell, but hadn’t been able to identify the spell. “It may take weeks, even months, to deconstruct the spell,” she concluded, “if we can do so at all. There are no visual components, so it’s a matter of trial and error.”
Lily had already figured out that she was the only Unit agent in the room. The questions that flew after Sherry’s report made it clear that most of the others knew diddly about magic. They weren’t stupid questions. Just ignorant. A couple people seemed skeptical about the validity of magically derived evidence. One guy was downright hostile.
“. . . scientific method means the results can be duplicated. You can’t say that about dancing around naked all night then coming up with—”
“Mayhew,” Drummond said, “shut up. She’s the expert. You aren’t. If you can’t flex that steel-trap mind of yours enough to accept that, you don’t belong on this team.”
Mayhew shut up. Lily didn’t think his mind had flexed, but he did shut up. She took advantage of the brief silence to say quietly to Sherry, “About IDing that spell . . . Cullen’s in town.”
“Excellent! He’s just what we need.”
Drummond had good ears. He zeroed right in on that. “Are you talking about Cullen Seabourne? That damn consultant you wanted?”
“That’s right. He arrived last night.”
“And you thought it was somehow okay to bring him in when I haven’t authorized—”
“He’s working pro bono for now.”
Sherry’s eyebrows shot up. “Cullen?”
Lily flashed her a grin. “Amazing, isn’t it?” She looked at Drummond. “We need to know more about the spell on that knife as quickly as possible. For example, if we know what tradition it’s drawn from, that may limit our suspect pool.”
“Explain.”
Sherry fielded that one. “With a few exceptions, practitioners can only work spells derived from or couched in their own tradition. A Vodun priest wouldn’t be able to cast a Nordic rune spell, for example, or an Egyptian zoan. There’s more overlap among the so-called pagan traditions, but even there, variations in symbology and sourcing make it difficult for a North American shaman to use most Wiccan spells without altering the spell.”
The MCD guy—Brassard—spoke up. “But there are exceptions.”
“Sorcerers are said to be able to work in multiple traditions.”