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“Let’s talk.” I pinned Red to his chair with my stare. I did deranged quite well, when the occasion required. Strangely, most of my opponents didn’t faint and crash to the ground from my stare, but Red was young and used to being bullied. He froze. I didn’t like to intimidate adolescent street urchins, but I had a feeling he would bolt at the slightest opportunity if I played it nice. “Tell me what you know about the coven.”
“Nothing.”
“You took Julie to their gathering place. How did you know where it was?”
“I didn’t spill, I swear.” Julie paled a little.
Red kept his gaze locked on me. “Same as I found this place. Got some of her mom’s hair off a brush at her house. Made a charm, spilled some blood, and let it lead me.”
Julie’s mom had to be alive at the time he cast his spell. Shamanistic spells were life-tied; to sense a dead body required a much more complicated ritual and the kind of power Red probably didn’t have. Not yet anyway.
“You went there by yourself first.” It was a guess, but I saw the confirmation in his eyes. “What did you see there, Red?”
His fingers twitched. He turned slightly to the right, hiding the side of his face from me.
“Let me see the right side of your neck.”
He swallowed.
“Now.”
Red turned. Three long gashes marked his neck from the earlobe all the way down to the collar of his rags. A thin line of yellow pus gathered under the puffy red edges of the wounds.
Not so good. I reached over and touched his head. He jerked back.
“Sit still, knucklehead.”
He felt feverish. I reached into the fridge and took out a jar of Rmd3 from the middle shelf. Red’s eyes flickered to the brownish paste and back to me.
“What’s in there?” Julie asked.
“Rmd3. Better known as Remedy.”
“It’s the stuff the People carry. I don’t need it.” Red shifted in his seat.
I looked at his face and saw the decisive thrust of the adolescent jaw. No intelligent life there. I turned to Julie. “It’s an herbal treatment for the infection he has brewing on his neck. This is the South-Pacific variety, the best one there is. It can cure the necrosis you get from the undead and takes care of all sorts of nasty infections.” I set the jar on the table. Real kava root, and pine-leaf geebung, and a half dozen other things. Expensive, but well worth it.