part in any upcoming war with Darkside, and infecting her might be nothing more than a safe means of keeping track of what her division is doing.”
“Then why not infect her boss? Or someone else in charge?” Jason asked.
Mo glanced at him. “It’s very possible they already have infected others, especially when you consider how often our joint investigations have gone south. But the preternatural team will not be their only targets. They will try to infect as many as possible across the full spectrum of government.”
“Well, fuck,” Jason muttered.
“Understatement of the year,” Luc said. “How the hell do we stop them? And can we get it out of Noelle?”
“I am by no means an expert on these things. I was working for the High Council at the time of the First World War, but wraith displacement was never something I was involved in—”
“Then who—”
“However,” Mo continued, cutting Luc off. “I know the theory behind it all well enough. Wraiths are, essentially, gaseous creatures that seep into the body through the skin and become one with the neurological centers. Removal involves a mix of careful magical unpicking and the use of what we now call thermal imaging.”
Which was why she’d been monitoring Noelle’s brain activity. Her electrical and maybe even biochemical outputs would have been very different with a wraith inside of her. That I’d also seen it was, as she’d said, interesting, though I had no idea what it meant.
“Can you do that?” Luc asked. “How dangerous will removal be?”
Mo grimaced. “I’m nowhere near skilled enough to perform such an operation, but the High Witch Council will certainly have a team who can. As to how dangerous the process is, that has always depended on not only how long and how deep the immersion is, but also on how old the wraith is. I’ve seen people infected with minor wraiths who came out intact mentally and physically while others lost their sanity.”
Luc swore again and thrust a hand through his hair. “Then we need to act now.”
Mo nodded and rose. “I’ll go ring the council and get the process moving.”
“Before you do,” Jason said, “do we know where she was infected? I’ll have to seal the area off until we can get it checked.”
“You won’t be checking it, the council will,” Mo said. “Wraiths are tricky critters to deal with.”
Jason hesitated and then nodded. “I’ll still need the location.”
Luc gave him the address then added, “She was sent there to investigate a possible Darkside disturbance.”
“What sort of disturbance?” Jason said. “I wasn’t informed about an attack in that area, and I should have been.”
“Residents reported screams and a thick smell of death in the apartment above them,” Luc said. “Noelle and Katie were sent to investigate—”
“Where’s Katie then?” Jason cut in sharply.
“Noelle couldn’t say. She can’t remember anything more than arriving there.”
Jason swore and turned to one of the men behind him. “Contact Kendrick and see if he’s got any further information.”
“Noelle was obviously infected within that apartment,” Mo said. “Wraiths cannot move around easily in our world—there’s far too much light pollution for them to survive more than a few minutes—and that means there has to be an active gateway present there.”
Jason frowned. “I didn’t think it was possible to create new gateways.”
“The dark elves are capable of creating minor gateways but for the most part don’t, as it generally costs their life. It’s more likely that if there is a gateway there, it’s simply a reformed one, especially given how old that part of London is.”
“My education is obviously lacking,” he said. “I had no idea gates could reform.”
“Gateways have never been static nor entirely stable. Whatever external force caused the gates to form between our two planes also likes to tear them apart.”
“Can we stop getting sidetracked?” Luc said, an edge in his voice. He waved a hand at his sister. “I need her fixed, Mo.”
She touched his arm lightly. “They’ll try their best, dear boy. I promise you that.”
She stepped past him and headed upstairs to make her calls. Luc took a deep breath, though it did little to calm his inner emotional turbulence because it continued to wash across my senses. He glanced at me. “What happened to the sword Noelle was carrying?”
“We moved it out of her reach.” I walked down to the shelf holding the pretty array of handmade soaps then reached up to the one above and grabbed the sword. The grip no longer held the charred remnants of Noelle’s fingers—Mo