open official investigations I’m supposed to stay on top of.”
And she had nothing but time—interrupted now and then by things like her arraignment. “That makes sense.”
Karonski gave her a nod. “Plus you can contact Rule a helluva lot easier than I can, and you can do the mindspeech thing with Mika. I can’t.”
“Not predictably or consistently,” she said, “so don’t count on me to—”
Cullen sat bolt upright. “Hot damn. That’s it.”
“What?” Lily said.
He waved a hand at her. “Not now. I’ve got the trigger, but I still need to see how the . . .” His voice fell to a low mutter involving phrases like “nine signa” and “west quadrant” and “Mephistophelian dilemma, dammit” as he squinted at his midair squiggles.
She regarded him wryly. “Does Cullen know he’s working under me?”
“Technically,” Rule said, “yes. You’ll have two other resources to draw on. Arjenie will handle research. Ruben set her up with virtually unrestricted access, so that includes pretty much anything in the Bureau’s databases. Your other resource comes from one of our allies. The brownies.”
“Brownies.”
He smiled. “They’ll be more helpful than you think. You may recall that I told you Parrott had ties to Humans First. I knew that because the brownies have been watching him. He’s met with Paul Chittenden three times in the last two months.”
“Chittenden.” Friar’s East Coast lieutenant. She drummed her fingers on the table. “Parrott’s tied in at the top, then, which damn sure changes the picture. You couldn’t tell me this before?”
“Unfortunately, no. Brownies are, as you said, timid. Part of their agreement with the Shadow Unit bans us from revealing specific information they’ve gathered unless that information is obtainable elsewhere. They don’t want anyone who hasn’t pinkie-sworn to not reveal their secrets to find any link back to them.”
Abel grinned. “He means ‘pinkie-sworn’ literally. That’s what they do, all very solemn. I imagine Harry will show up at some point to take your vow.”
“Harry. Like my cat?”
“Exactly like your cat.” Rule’s eyes gleamed with amusement. “He’s the leader of the troop who are spying for us. He took that use-name to deal with us in honor of Dirty Harry, whom they consider a great warrior. When that demon showed up here last year—”
“They know about that?”
“Apparently they find you and me too interesting to ignore in spite of the clear drawbacks to being in our company. They’ve been keeping an eye on us whenever we come to D.C. When the demon approached last year, Dirty Harry yowled—giving warning—then took off.”
“That’s their idea of a great warrior?”
“He warned the others and made an excellent escape. Brownies are escape artists. They don’t consider courage a virtue. A grim necessity, perhaps. When I first met Harry, he compared courage to taking a laxative. If you must then you must, but you don’t want people patting you on the back for it, and you’d be crazy to swallow a whole bottle of cod liver oil if a little sip will do the job.”
She had to grin. “So Dirty Harry took the necessary sip, then split, which makes him a hero.”
“That’s about right, from what I can tell. You’ll have to get Harry—the brownie Harry, not the cat—to tell you the story sometime.”
Lily had never visited a brownie reservation. There weren’t any on the West Coast. “Are they as cute as they look in their pictures?”
Karonski snorted. “They’re freaking adorable.”
She nodded. She was kind of looking forward to meeting the brownie leader. “Okay. I need to lay out what I need from you two. Cullen, stop playing with your shiny lines and pay attention.”
“What?” He scowled. “I need to—”
“At the moment,” Rule said, “you need to do what Lily says.”
Cullen grimaced, but waved at his air-drawings. They vanished. “I’m listening.”
“You said the dagger might be elven made.”
“Not the dagger. The spell on it. And I don’t know for sure because I need to see the grimoire to confirm, but the spell is a mix of Vodun—that’s the part I’ve been working on in spite of all these interruptions—and what looks almost like Celtic runes. Almost, but not quite. The Vodun segment’s the trigger, which makes sense. Vodun specializes in charms and curses that can be used by nulls. Though there’s a weird bit to it—but I’ll tell you about that in a minute. The thing is, the Celtic-looking runes are not Celtic. I think they’re elven, because Celtic runes were derived in part from elven. But I need the damn grimoire—”