I don’t think I imagined the smug twist to his lips at the knowledge she approved of him, not Linus.
“Some days more than others.” She was grateful to him, but she was also still hurting from his betrayal. Forgiving him for breaching her wards, kidnapping Keet, it would require time. “I better go make sure.” I rushed around to the back porch and found Linus standing in the grass, fists clenched, with Cletus wavering behind him. “Woolly, let him in.”
The porch light brightened in acknowledgment of my request. For once, she wasn’t fighting me.
“It’s safe now.” Under different circumstances, I would have laughed at his hesitance, but nothing about this struck me as funny. Woolly and I were under attack. Again. I stood on the bottommost step and held out my hand. He took it, wrapping his cold fingers around mine, and I hauled him through the barrier encompassing Woolworth House. “Come on. Amelie’s this way.”
“Amelie?” He matched his stride to mine. “Was this her doing?”
As much as I wanted to defend her with a vehement no, I had to admit, “I don’t know.” We rounded the corner. “We found her out here like this.”
Boaz swung his head our way, and his gaze dragged down my arm to the hand still holding Linus’s.
“Any idea what happened?” Boaz demanded, his tone sharp. Under his stare, I broke away from Linus so fast he flinched. “Grier is picking up on an anomaly within Amelie’s tattoo. Care to give your two cents?”
Having his arm almost yanked out of its socket mustn’t have fazed Linus as much as I thought. He knelt beside Amelie and examined her tattoo, jerking his hand back the instant his fingers brushed the ink.
“That was unexpected.” He didn’t meet my eyes, just angled his chin in my general direction. “You sensed the heat too?”
“It burned me.” I rolled my thumb over the sore spot. “I have a blister.”
The thoughtful way he inspected his pointer made me think he had suffered the same negative reaction. I half expected him to offer to soothe my hurt, and when he didn’t, it almost stung. “Does Woolly have any ideas about who or what attacked her?”
“No.” I patted the nearest railing. “The images she sent me don’t make much sense. She’s aware of where she was struck—on the front steps—but not how or who initiated the strike.”
“What do you think it means?” Boaz asked Linus. He wasn’t looking at me either. Great.
“There’s no residue on the lawn that I noticed or shrapnel on the stairs. The blow must have been magical in nature.” He confirmed what I had been thinking. “That might explain why a siege against Woolly resonated through the tattoo on Amelie. Grier designed them both, and Amelie was within Woolly’s protective bubble at the time.”
A chill scrabbled down my spine. “You’re saying Amelie is linked to Woolly?”
“No.” Linus tugged her sock over the design. “I’m saying she’s connected to you.”
Somehow that made it worse. I was used to being responsible for Woolly, but Amelie? Forever?
“Whose blood did you use?” I rubbed my forehead. “Yours or…?”
“Maud was the donor.” He angled his head in my direction without meeting my gaze. “I involved myself as little as possible to make Amelie and Boaz more comfortable.”
That brought Boaz’s head up, and a frown pinched his forehead, but he didn’t share his thoughts with us.
“The wards were inked using Maud’s blood too,” I reminded him. “Her blood could be the connection.”
“There’s power in her blood, potent magic, but it’s…” he searched for the word, “…inert.”
Meaning the energy had survived, but its origin no longer existed. The remaining power took on the tenor—for lack of a better word—of the practitioner. And since I had applied Woolly’s wards, and he had applied Amelie’s tattoo, there was no harmony between them. Each carried its own tune.
“That only leaves the design,” I said, praying he contradicted my logic but not holding my breath.
“Practitioners are inventing original designs and mass distributing them all the time. There’s a thriving patent business. I’m proof of that. There are hundreds of textbooks put into the hands of thousands of children that never elicit this response.” He rose with a frown fixed in place. “No designs are specific to the person who created them. Any residual link, if there was one, should dissolve the first time the sigil is used by another necromancer.”
Thanks to my rare designation, sharing my work with others was unlikely, but it worried me that I might not be able to use it either without running the risk of connecting my client to me. “I’m a freak of nature.”
“No, you’re not.” Halfway to brushing his fingers against the back of my hand, Linus dropped his arm to his side. “I’m going to conduct a search. I can start with Woolly and work my way toward the property line.” Head down, he lingered a moment longer. “How certain are you that Eloise left Savannah?”
“We saw her get into a car. She left the grounds, but we can’t be certain where she went from there.” He nodded and took a step back, but I pinched the fabric of his shirt where it rolled over his elbow to hold him in place. “Do you think she did this?”
“We’ll know more soon,” he promised, easing back until I lost my grip on him. “I won’t be long.”
Flashing lights strobed over us, washing his pale face in reds and blues, as an ambulance screamed into the driveway. Two doors slammed, and two sets of footsteps pounded up the flagstone path. However, in a surprising move, neither of them braved the steps. One must have possessed enough magic to sense the wards. Or they came armed with equipment that helped them perceive any hidden dangers they might encounter on calls.
“Medic,” Heinz called. “Get your hot, fresh medic.”
“We’re back here.” As Linus left, I stood to go fetch him. “I’ll come get you.”
Woolly, for her part, was as polite as could be to the men, allowing them on the porch with nary a flicker of her opinionated porch light. Both men were Low Society and gaped as her curtains flittered, and she preened beneath their regard. Nudging them out of their stupor after she batted her blinds at them, I guided them to Amelie. Luckily, a downed patient was enough to snap them out of their trance.
Chewing my thumbnail, I hovered behind the guys while they examined Amelie.
“Let me try something,” Heinz said at last. “Does she have any allergies?”
“No.” Boaz beat me to the punch. “What do you have in mind?”
“I’ve seen kids with these symptoms. Only High Society, though.” He snapped on a pair of gloves. “A magical interaction in the blood causes the problem. The condition is linked to new bonds formed with familiars. For a while, it’s push and pull while the two acclimate to one another. Most animals have a stronger survival drive than people. They pull too much energy from the kid, and the drain knocks them out cold.” He held out his hand, and his partner slapped a plastic kit across his palm. Inside, vials filled with what resembled diluted ink sloshed. “This mixture won’t break the bond, but it confuses the magic long enough for both parties to normalize.”
There was no hesitation in Boaz. “Do it.”
Amelie gasped awake ten seconds after Heinz depressed the plunger.
“W-w-what…?” She sucked down huge lungfuls of air. “Boaz?”
“Everything’s okay, sis.” He pinned down her shoulder. “You winked out on us there for a minute.”
“Miss Amelie, you’re coming with us.” Heinz conducted a quick examination then nodded his satisfaction. “I’ve never seen a Low Society necromancer exhibit these symptoms. We need to run a full screen on you.”
“That’s out of the question.” Boaz rubbed a hand over his face. “Know any phlebotomists who make house calls?”
“Sorry, man.” Heinz cringed while yanking off his gloves. “I wasn’t thinking.”