“He doesn’t know how to cloak yet.”
Luther squinted at me. “Is that what you look like? Show me.”
Yes, and for my next trick I’ll dance and sing a song. “No.”
“I’ve analyzed your dead varmint for you. Free of charge.”
“It was your duty as a public servant. You would’ve done it anyway.”
“Kate! Don’t be difficult.”
“Fine.”
I dropped my magic cloak. Luther blinked. He stepped forward very carefully, deposited Conlan into my hands, and stepped back.
A blond woman wearing scrubs appeared in the doorway. “What is it with all the magic splashing? Damn it, Luther, can’t you control your . . .” She saw us and stopped. Her eyes widened.
“Wow,” she said softly.
“I know, right?” Luther said quietly.
For a while they just looked at us. Conlan squirmed in my arms.
“Is this what we will be one day?” the woman murmured. “Future us?”
“This is what the past us were.” Luther sighed. “Better put it away before Allen runs over here. We’ll spend the whole day trying to get him to leave.”
I hid my magic.
The woman lingered for a few moments, shook her head, and left. I sat Conlan down on the floor. He ran to the chalk circle, puzzled over the line, and reached out, waving his hand in front of his face.
“He feels the boundary,” I told Luther.
“That’s sickeningly cute.” Luther grabbed a handle on one of the square metal doors on the wall and pulled a body shelf out. On it lay the remnants of my monster.
Conlan hopped in place by the chalk line, achieving about an inch of lift.
“Do you want to jump?” Luther said.
“Don’t encourage him.”
“It’s good for him to try. It’s a major developmental milestone. Toddlers learn to take tiny jumps around two years old. It’s very exciting for them.”
“How do you even know this?”
Luther spared me a look. “I have nieces. There is no harm. All he can do is a hop.” He waved to Conlan. “Don’t listen to your mom. You can do it. Jump!”
Conlan gathered himself into a tight ball. I’d seen Curran do this a hundred times.
“You can do it!” Luther prompted.
Conlan leaped three feet into the air, cleared a full twelve feet, and landed in the circle. Luther’s jaw hung open.
Conlan giggled and jumped out of the circle. Then back in. Then out.
“So,” Luther said. “He is a shapeshifter.”
“Oh yes. You’re slipping, Luther.”
“I’m not slipping. He is emitting all sorts of magic, and I don’t sniff or lick other people’s children, even to diagnose their magic. That would be creepy.”
In and out. In and out. When we got home, I would draw a circle for Conlan. It would keep him busy for a couple of minutes.
“He is a shapeshifter,” Luther said again.
“We’ve established this fact.”
He faced me. “Kate. He is a shapeshifter with magic.”
“Dali is also a shapeshifter with magic.”
“Dali is a sacred animal. Completely different. All her magic is divine-based. She curses and purifies. He is a shapeshifter and he has magic. Mountains of magic. Oceans of magic. There has never been anything like it.”
Tell me about it. “Any progress with Serenbe?”
“So you’re just going to blatantly change the subject.”
“Yep. Any progress?”
Luther shook his head. “No.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Nothing beyond what I sent you. The GBI is interviewing the surviving relatives. Nobody was courting the dark gods. Nobody was summoning anything. Most of them had little magic. There were a few plant mages and firebugs. The usual. One of them was an ex-merc. You might have known him. He went by Shock.”
“Shock Collins?”
“Yes.”
“He left the Guild when it almost went bankrupt. I had no idea he moved out there. You know for sure he disappeared?”
“Yes. We found his wallet in his house, with driver’s license and Guild ID in it.”
This was bad news. Shock Collins had been a careful, skilled merc, who turned nasty when cornered. He’d survived several bad gigs that should’ve killed him, and he could electrocute an attacker in a pinch. He wouldn’t let himself be jumped.
“Signs of struggle in the house?”
“No.”
“What the he . . . heck?”
Luther lowered his glasses and looked at me. I pointed to Conlan over my shoulder. Motherhood made you watch your mouth.
“I do have something on your furry monster friend,” Luther said. “At first glance, it appeared to be a new species of post-Shift ugly, until we cut this hideous specimen open and played with his innards a little bit.”
He pushed a metal table over to the body shelf and flipped the metal door up, revealing a handle. He grabbed the handle, pulled it, and the body neatly slid onto the examination table. Luther rolled the table forward, to a stand with a fey lantern. I followed.
He pulled back the sheet, revealing the neat autopsy scars. With it dead, the impact wasn’t quite as strong, but the revulsion squirmed through me all the same.
“What do you feel when you look at it?”
“Hungry,” Luther said.
“You need help,” I told him.
“I haven’t eaten breakfast today, or lunch.”
“Seriously, Luther, do you get a sense of wrongness?”
“No.”
I sighed.
“Unless you’re referring to the corruption miasma so thick you can cut it with a knife and serve it with ketchup. Who do you think you’re talking to? Of course I feel the miasma. You would have to be blind, deaf, and anosmic to not react to it, and even then, you would still feel it.”
“Why does it do this?”
“Because she might have started as human.”
“I figured as much. Julie said they were blue, so they likely had a human ancestor.”
“No, not ancestor.” Luther grimaced. “She was born human.”
I pointed to the furry twisted creature. “That was born human?”
Luther coughed. “Yes. Probably.”
“So, what is it, some strange form of loupism?”
“That was the working theory for a bit, but we found no Lyc-V in her system.”
“Are you sure? Because they were really hard to kill.”
“I’m sure. The body did undergo profound changes. All of the human organs are still there, but everything has been altered. The fascia, which is . . .” Luther coughed again. He sounded choked. “. . . fibrous connective tissue enclosing organs and musculature, has been . . . reinforced . . .” He doubled over, coughing.
Behind him, a cloud of emerald-green dust poured into the room through the doorway. The powder licked the boundary of the circle and recoiled.
Luther straightened. A puff of green powder escaped his mouth. His eyes stared at me, glassy and cold.
There were four feet between me and the circle. I cleared them in a single jump, caught Conlan in midleap, and backed away toward the center of the ward.
The dust filled the room now, shifting like diaphanous emerald veils all around us. Only the surface of the circle remained clear. And Sarrat and all my weapons were conveniently stowed in Luther’s stupid box, deep in green dust. Great.
Luther stepped to the circle, rigid, like a marionette pulled by its strings. “Traitor,” he hissed in a sibilant voice.
Conlan growled in my arms.
Oh good, it wanted to talk. “Who did I betray?”
“Stupid traitorous bitch. Unworthy.”
Was this a box thing? “Of all the insults out there, this is what you come up with? Pathetic.”
“He’s done everything for you. You’re not fit to lick shit off the soles of his boots.”
“Shit eating is your job.” The more I pissed it off, the more it would talk and the faster I would figure out what the hell was going on. “Try harder.”
Luther moved in short jerks. He was fighting whatever it was. He was also a distraction. If you wanted to launch a surprise attack, it helped if your target focused her attention on someone else. Luther was meant to keep me preoccupied. When the attack came, it would be at my back. I was still holding Conlan. I would have to drop him to defend us and trust that he’d stay in the circle. He was only a year old. He had no sense. He licked walls and ate soap, for crying out loud.
“He gave you life.”