“I don’t know what it’s doin’. Oh, it’s healing that arm of yours—that’s part of it—but the rest . . . maybe it is tryin’ to turn you lupi and can’t, but I’ve seen plenty of youngsters right close to First Change. There are neurological changes that occur then. But the changes I sense in you aren’t what I sensed then. Maybe it’s tryin’ to heal you in a way your system isn’t set up for. I don’t know.”
She met Lily’s eyes. Her gaze was steady, but Lily saw trouble in those dark eyes. “But whatever the mantle’s doin’, it’s not good for you. You’ve had two mini-strokes in the last few days. The mantle’s healing that damage, but what else it’s doin’ . . . I don’t have the medical words to describe that, but you need to get it out of you and where it belongs. You need to do that real soon.”
“It’s not all one way,” Cullen said.
“What?” Lily craned her head to look up at him. “What do you mean?”
He gestured at her stomach. “The Wythe mantle is still purple, but it’s the wrong shade of purple. It may be doing something to you, but you’re doing something to it, too.”
SIXTEEN
LILY reached the conference room she and Mullins were using a little after two thirty. Craig drove her, not Cullen. That pissed her off. She didn’t know Craig well and hated the idea of having one of her headache fits in front of him. But Cullen needed to keep his afternoon free to go take a look at the dagger, and that was exactly what she wanted him to do. She had no damn reason to be angry.
Maybe her anger wasn’t about Cullen.
She shoved the door open. Mullins looked up from a scatter of papers. “About time you got back.”
The air was redolent with hamburger and onions. Lily could see the remains of Mullins’s lunch pushed to one end of the table. She headed for the coffeepot. “You ever get in to see a doctor exactly on time?”
“Guess not. I want to take the secretary first.”
“Nanette Beresford? Sure.” Lily poured a cup of coffee.
The Rhej hadn’t told her to avoid caffeine. She’d said Lily should “avoid exertion.” No running. No late nights. Not that the healer knew for certain those things would hurt Lily. She was just guessing.
Mini-strokes. Dear God.
“The doctor gave you a green light?”
“I’m supposed to avoid strenuous exercise.”
“Guess you’d better not chase me round the table, then. You were going to talk to your expert. Find out anything useful?”
“Parrott must be having his charm renewed every four weeks at the very least. Whether or not it does what he says, it would need renewal at least that often.”
He grunted. “Doesn’t tell us much. You sure you’re okay? You look like crap.”
“Headache. It won’t interfere with the job.” Except that her head didn’t hurt right now, and it would interfere. She was lying and would keep on lying. She couldn’t tell anyone about mantles, and she didn’t see any way of explaining that a healer considered her life in danger without mentioning why. If she tried, she’d be pulled from the investigation and stuck in a hospital and they’d run tests, which wouldn’t help because the doctors couldn’t fix the mantle even if they knew about it.
She poured herself some coffee. Her arm shook ever so slightly. “We need to find out who made Parrott’s charm. Who’s renewing it. Maybe he’s doing it himself, maybe he knows a really good practitioner—because it would take a real expert to make a strong, sophisticated charm like that.” She sipped. It was this morning’s brew, old and bitter. “Someone who can make a charm like that might be able to make a cursed dagger, too.”
“Huh.” He made a note on the paper in front of him. “I’ll pass that on to Al. Worth looking into. Here’s who we still need to talk to.” He read a list of names.
Lily listened and sipped at the bitter sludge in her cup and tried so damn hard to think about the case, and not about ticking time bombs and Old Ones who used you for their own purposes and didn’t care if it killed you or not. Not about Rule and the wild fear in his eyes, or how many people her dying would hurt, or how in the hell she could keep that from happening.
She went to get their first witness for the afternoon. And managed to focus on