Esme continued to smirk at her.
“What?” Tinker asked.
“You just”—Esme made a slight crashing noise and motioned with one hand to indicate something being plowed over—“go right through people. I think it’s very funny.”
Tinker scowled at her and turned back to Lain, who was gathering up the swabs. “One through three are the dead children. I’m four — just in case you destroyed what you had from me. Five through nine are my Hand. The other four kids are scattered in among the rest. I didn’t want it obvious that I was mainly after them. I hit Merry, too — she’s another Stone Clan child, but the oni didn’t get a hold of her. She’s number ninety-five.”
“Good. She can stand as a control.” Lain stowed the swabs in a drawer and locked it. “I scanned in the spell. I’ll have to print off more copies.”
Tinker checked the printouts on top of the printer and found that Lain had already printed a dozen copies. “Do you really need the spell? Can’t you use your lab?”
“The spell might not be doing something as straightforward as a simple DNA scan. For all we know, it might be predicting what the children’s DNA would be if subjected to gene manipulation. We still don’t know if the scans you found were from the children, and a traditional lab scan might not produce the same results as the spell.”
Tinker nodded, following Lain’s logic. “I’ll have to talk to the tengu. They might have some clue what oni spell-working—” Tinker frowned at the spell in her hand. “Damn. This is elf magic, too.”
“Are you sure?” Lain asked.
Tinker slowly shook her head. “Not really.” She handed it to Pony to study. “I’ve only done a little with healing spells. You and Grandpa were pretty much against me experimenting with them.”
“For a good reason,” Lain said. “You could have killed someone if you got the spells wrong.”
“Yes, and I understood that, so I left them alone. The first one I ever cast was to save Windwolf’s life.”
Pony was shaking his head. “You are right that this is Elvish. The command word is ancient Elvish, common to the type that the Skin Clan would have used. I do not know enough about spell-working to recognize this, domi. Wolf would know.” He caught her look of surprise. “The domana are taught their clan’s esva and spell-working.”
She sighed as it reminded her yet again of what she should know but didn’t. She wondered if Windwolf was home yet from the daily wild-goose chase of trying to find the oni encampments. She frowned as she realized that the Stone Clan domana always joined Windwolf. And this spell was printed from a computer or. .
Tinker turned to face both Pony and Stormsong. “Did Sparrow know spell-working?”
“No, domi,” Pony said.
Tinker continued to frown as facts pointed to a logical answer. “Sparrow could drive. Could she work computers?”
Stormsong laughed. “She could drive badly. She could use the telephone with difficulty. Why she made the effort to learn is now obvious, but she hated technology. Computers were beyond her.”
Tinker held up the spell. “Who printed off this spell then? I really doubt the Stone Clan knows computers well enough to set up and print a spell.”
“The oni could have done it for them,” Stormsong pointed out. “The oni would only need one copy of the spell to scan in.”
Tinker considered that. Some of the oni forces, especially the ones raised on Earth like the kitsune Chiyo, knew computers enough for it to work that way, but it still didn’t seem right. “The timing keeps being off, over and over again. The Stone Clan just got to Pittsburgh, and True Flame has had them running in tight circles ever since. There has to be someone else other than Sparrow and the Stone Clan. Could there be other domana in Pittsburgh?”
Her Hand shook their heads.
“We would know,” Pony said. “Domana do not travel without notice.”
Was that true? Considering that of the several thousand elves in Pittsburgh, only five were domana, the sekasha might not have trouble keeping track of the entire caste. How many domana were there on Elfhome? A couple thousand? A few hundred? Less than a hundred? She needed more data.
“Who else would know spell-working and computers?” Tinker asked. “The healers at the hospice?”
They shook their heads.
“The magic they do is not the same as spell-working,” Pony explained.
“Nor are they any more versed in computers than, say”—Stormsong paused to find the perfect analogy—“Wraith Arrow.”
Tinker winced, knowing that Windwolf’s First was a technophobe. “Who is taught spell-working? Only domana?”
They nodded.
She stared at the spell as the insidious suggested itself. Spell-working had been created by the Skin Clan. The oni’s greater bloods took spell-working to levels undreamed of on Elfhome. If this was a sample of the oni’s magic, and it was elfin, then perhaps the oni greater bloods weren’t oni at all. “Is it possible that the Skin Clan escaped to Onihida?”
All the dangerous links to spell-working locked away, they drove toward McDermott’s in dark, brooding silence. By now the dead children had been reduced to small piles of cold ash. Their betrayal, though, might have been the tip of a massive iceberg.
“We have no proof,” Stormsong finally murmured.
Pony was behind the steering wheel. The dash lights gleamed on his profile as he gave Stormsong a hard look.
“The others will want proof,” Stormsong said. “We can’t take them wild guesses. We will look like babies afraid of the lightning.”
Tinker gave her one shaky proof. “How did Sparrow expect to control the oni once the domana were overthrown? If the Skin Clan are the greater bloods, then the oni are already under their control.”
Pony looked pained as he focused on the dark roads. “Domi, if you believe this, then I am sure you are right. Stormsong is also correct in saying that the others will need proof.”
Tinker slunk down in her seat, wishing she felt as sure as Pony did. His trust in her was intimidating. “No, I could be wrong. It’s just a hunch.”
“Your mother is a very strong intanyai seyosa.” Stormsong used the Elvish name for one who could see the future. “It passes through the female line. You have it to some degree.”
Tinker snorted in disbelief.
“I’ve seen you race, Beloved,” Stormsong said. “You were aggressive beyond reason because you let your ability guide you.”
It went against Tinker’s grain to go without solid proof. Science was about facts, not hunches. This hunch, though, was eating away at her gut.
Stormsong suddenly shouted “Out!” as she threw open the door, caught Tinker by the waist, and flung them both out into the night. They hit the highway hard, Stormsong taking the brunt of the fall, and tumbled on the rough asphalt before Stormsong’s shields wrapped around them in brilliant blue. A second later, the Rolls erupted into flame. Tinker screamed in pain and horror as searing heat and deafening noise blasted over them. Pony!
Stormsong held her close, muffling Tinker’s scream against her shoulder. “Shhh.” Stormsong tucked them behind a concrete Jersey barrier. The gas tank burst in a secondary explosion even as random car pieces rained down onto the roadway around them. Thick black smoke rolled up into the night, awash with the blaze of the roaring fire.
Tinker locked her jaw tight against the pain and anguish. Someone had hit the Rolls with a rocket. Had the others reacted in time to Stormsong’s warning? Were they safe? There was something wrong with her right arm; it felt like it was on fire. She couldn’t make her fingers move. She couldn’t summon her shields. The ammo in the trunk started to go off in random cracks of gunfire.