“What are you talking about?” Adam appeared in the doorway between shop and storage area. “How can you be sure?”
“It was Ed. Ed Minsky, the guy we’re supposed to have supper with tomorrow. He left this in my safe.” Adam lifted his hand, which held a silk scarf along with the ruby. He’d handled enough magical items in his time to know better than to touch one that was active . . . and this one was.
Jasper had never thought of himself as a sorcerer, not until a real sorcerer told him that’s exactly what he was. According to Cullen Seabourne, the common definition of sorcery—the legal definition—was nonsense. It wasn’t being able to use magic outside yourself that made you a sorcerer. It was the Sight.
Jasper’s Gift was fairly weak. Unless there was a ton of power involved, he had to work at it to see magic. He’d seen the glow from this gem while it was still inside the safe, and he hadn’t been trying.
Adam frowned at the gem in Jasper’s hand. “How do you know it was Ed?”
“First, because the item he wants me to look at is a ruby. Second, because he’s one of a handful of people in the world who could have opened my safe, left this, and gotten away before we arrived.”
Adam’s eyebrow’s shot up. “He’s a safecracker?”
“The best, he’d tell you, but Ed exaggerates sometimes. He’s in the top five, though.” He’d worked a job with Ed once. Normally he’d worked alone—you really can’t trust thieves—but that particular safe had been beyond his skills. The job had gone smooth as silk, and Ed had taken his cut in gems, as agreed. Jasper’s share had included a very old book. A spellbook, to be precise. His specialty had been magical items, usually contracted for in advance. A smaller market than the gemstones Ed preferred, but a lucrative one.
“Why would he do that?”
“The reason that occurs to me does not make me happy. Give me your shirt.”
“For what?”
“It’s silk, isn’t it?” Jasper wrapped the gem in the scarf. It was a large scarf; as he finished, the glow dimmed, but did not disappear.
“Yes, but—”
“Whatever this is, it’s powerful. Powerful means potentially dangerous, and I don’t want it leaking all over the place. The only thing I know of that can block magic is silk.”
“It’s a magic ruby?” Adam asked, intrigued. He started unbuttoning his shirt. “What does it do?”
“I don’t know. That’s part of the problem. The other part being why Ed broke into my shop to plant it here.”
“You think he’s trying to frame you or something?”
Jasper shook his head. “Not Ed. It isn’t the police we need to worry about.” Though he was damn glad now that he hadn’t called them. “It’s whoever Ed wants to hide this from.”
“Huh.” Adam shrugged out of his shirt and handed it over. “So what do we do?”
“Put it back in the safe for now, I guess.” Jasper wrapped the shirt around the wad of scarf. The glow dimmed still more. He could still see it if he tried, though. “And ask Ed some questions tomorrow night.”
? ? ?
BUT Jasper didn’t get to ask Ed any questions. Ed didn’t show up to buy him and Mark dinner, so they ate pad Thai without him. A couple hours after they got home, a homicide detective knocked on their door. Edward Robert Minsky’s mutilated body had been found in a Dumpster about a mile from the shop. His phone had been in his pocket, and Jasper’s number was the last call made from that phone.
Naturally, the detective wanted to know everything Jasper could tell him. No doubt the subsequent interview was frustrating for the man, since there was almost nothing Jasper could say. An old friend had called to ask him and his fiancé to dinner, but hadn’t shown up. No, he didn’t know what Ed had wanted, other than the chance to catch up. No, he didn’t know where Ed had been staying, or anyone who might have had it in for Ed. Some thief, no doubt, Jasper had told the man. Ed dealt in gems, after all. Maybe he’d had some with him, or the thief thought he did.
The San Francisco Police Department later determined from the video at Jasper’s shop that he and Mark had gone there less than an hour after the detective left. They’d entered the premises at 12:10 and left again at 12:17, after which—as far as the SFPD could tell—they vanished.
NINETEEN
Dragonhome
FIVE glistening gray-brown bodies leaped through the water, churning out water-diamonds to sparkle in the sun. All wore harnesses, the rigging that hitched them to the boat. One had a rider.
Physical contact wasn’t necessary for the Siji to use their Gift; it was simply easier that way. The rider controlled the lead beast. Chún were herd animals and not very bright. Instinct told them to follow the leader, and that’s what they did, needing only an occasional nudge from the Siji acting as backup. The boat father and his daughter did most of the riding—her in the morning, him in the afternoon, with his sons taking turns in the backup spot. They had the strongest Gifts.
It was afternoon now. Had they been in a world with clocks, Rule would have guessed it to be between three and four o’clock. In this world, the slant of the sun and the growl in his stomach said it had been too long since lunch . . . which had not included meat. People in this world did not eat much meat. It made him want to go hunt his own.
“I need a few drops of blood,” Lily’s grandmother said.
He turned to look at her. “My blood, I assume?”
“It will activate the ointment and key it to you.” She held out a small pottery bowl. “Hold this.”
The substance in the little bowl looked like dirty Crisco and smelled like fat, flowers, and herbs—chrysanthemum and honeysuckle, ginseng and licorice, plus others his nose couldn’t pick out in this form.
“Give me your other hand,” Grandmother said.
He lifted his lip at her in a silent snarl. “I am not Gan, to be given orders.”
“No, you are a very touchy wolf who should show more respect for your elder.”
He inhaled slowly. Exhaled. “My apologies.” After a pause he added, “I dreamed of my brother last night. All day, it’s felt as if he rode the boat with me. It makes me feel . . . hasty.”
“A difficult dream?”
“They all are lately.” Another pause. “He’s still alive. Not just in the sense that we’re in an earlier time here, one before he was hurt. He was still alive when we left.”
“So Gan said.”
“So is Cullen.”
She didn’t respond to that.
“I won’t grieve for him,” he told her fiercely. Gan had been sure Benedict was alive when she started grabbing people and crossing with them. She had not been sure about Cullen. She sensed life directly, if Rule understood what üther was, so he could trust what she said about Benedict. But in all the commotion, she hadn’t had time to sort out the üther she’d sensed where Cullen fell. Some had been from demons. Maybe all. Or maybe not.
“That is a good decision,” she told him crisply. “Even better if you would stop worrying yourself ill over what has not yet happened.”