. . the third time it happened, I was exhausted afterward. I couldn’t stay awake.”
“Any dizziness? Nausea? Weakness in one place more’n another? Any change in vision?”
“You mean like a migraine aura?”
“Any kind of change.”
Lily shook her head. “I felt dizzy after it happened the third time. Exhausted. No nausea, though. I thought it might be some kind of migraine. My aunt has migraines.”
“Let’s find out. Give me your hands.” The older woman stretched her hands across the table to Lily.
The Rhej had warm hands with wide palms and long fingers . . . and lots of magic. Healing magic, yes, and Lily loved to touch a healer’s magic. If air could experience touch, it would feel like this beneath the slow stir of the summer sun, with new-grown grass blades brushing against it like a friendly cat. But there was more. Lily felt that more, banked and waiting and massive—the fur-and-pine prickle of lupi magic.
A Rhej could, at need, draw upon the magic of the entire clan. Lily had no idea how. The Rhej was fully human. She didn’t hold the mantle, couldn’t affect it, wasn’t part of it. But she could use it to do what the Rho could not.
The Rhej’s face smoothed out, her eyes losing focus. She hummed softly . . . “Amazing Grace,” Lily realized. Maybe she did work with spiritual energy like Nettie did. Lily didn’t feel anything. No wave of seeking magic touched her skin. She didn’t get sleepy the way she usually did when Nettie examined her, but Nettie almost always ended up putting her in sleep, so . . .
“Cullen,” the woman said in a low, soft voice, “I want you to look at that passenger of hers. Look real close and careful.”
Rule frowned. “What is it?”
The Rhej shook her head without replying. Cullen slipped out of his chair and knelt on one knee beside Lily. “Push away from the table so I can see.”
“I can’t . . .” But the Rhej let go of Lily’s hands so she could. She scooted her chair back and tried not to fidget while Cullen moved in front of her and stared intently at her abdomen. After a bit he frowned. He started muttering under his breath—it sounded like an unholy mix of Hawaiian and Norwegian—while he sketched signs in the air. He put his palms together as if he were praying, then drew them apart slowly, stopping when they framed about twenty inches of space.
He moved that space slowly up to Lily’s neck, peering at it intently for several moments, then shifted so he could move behind Lily, holding his hands steady. She couldn’t see what he did for several way-too-long moments. Her heart pounded.
Finally he moved back in front of her. His hands were only about ten inches apart now. He dragged those ten inches of empty space back down her trunk, pausing now and then, passing her stomach to study her pelvis. He snapped his fingers, releasing what Lily guessed was a magnifying spell.
Slowly he stood. “That . . . doesn’t make sense.”
“What did you see?” the Rhej asked.
“Roots. That’s what they look like, tiny tendrils finer than a hair, too small to see without magnification. I found seven of them. They go from the mantle into her spinal cord. Four of them seem to stay there. Three of them . . .” He stopped, looked at Lily, then at Rule. “Three extend through the brain stem to the cerebellum and are tangled up in her brain.”
“In my brain?” Lily’s voice came out too high. “The mantle’s doing something to me? It shouldn’t be able to. My Gift wouldn’t let it.”
Rule clasped her hand tightly. “Even without your Gift, it shouldn’t be doing that. Mantles don’t root in their holder. They don’t work that way.” He looked sharply over his shoulder at Cullen. “You’ve never seen that with another mantle.”
Cullen shook his head. He looked from Lily to Rule and back. Not at their faces, but their middles, as if he were comparing Rule’s mantles to the one Lily harbored.
“I’m sorry,” the Rhej said. “I can’t say what’s going on, but the mantle seems to be . . . changin’ things in your body. Not in a way that makes sense to me. Not in a way that’s good for you.”
“Is it trying to make me lupi?” Lily’s voice was still too high. She couldn’t make it sound normal.
The Rhej shook her head slowly, her eyebrows drawn in a hard frown.