Kate Daniels 03 - Magic Strikes

you to keep trying to revert to human shape,” Jim said. “Don’t strain yourself, but keep a steady pressure.”
    I hooked the first shard with the tweezers and plucked it from her paw. Blood gushed. Dali jerked, pulling me with her. Fire laced my side. I winced. There went Doolittle’s patching.
    “Hold still, please.”
    Dali whined and let me have her paw. The cut didn’t seal. I swiped at it with gauze. Still open. Shit. She and Derek now exhibited the same symptoms: an inability to shift and retarded regeneration. I deposited the bloody piece of frosted-white glass onto the lid of the first aid kit.
    “Let’s talk scents.” Jim’s voice was smooth, soothing. “Did you smell anything odd off the bodies?”
    Dali rocked her head side to side.
    I plucked another shard from her paw. “Aside from shape, do you feel any different?”
    Dali whined. That was the trouble with shapeshifters in animal form: they couldn’t vocalize and most couldn’t write. Yes and no questions were our only option.
    I hooked the third shard, but the tweezers slipped. The sucker was deep in there. “Dali, spread your fingers for me if you can.”
    Huge claws shot out from her paw as she spread her toes.
    “Thank you.” I pinched the shard and pulled it out.
    The tiger flesh boiled under my fingers and I found myself holding a human hand.
    “Oh my God.” Dali’s voice hit a trembling high note. “Oh my God.”
    “What did you do?” Jim leaned forward, focused as if he sighted prey.
    Tears swelled in Dali’s eyes. “I thought I would be stuck in animal form forever.” She looked around the room. “I wrecked the place. And your wound . . . I’m so sorry.”
    “Don’t worry about it,” I mumbled, focused on the shard. It looked yellow to me. The tulip lamp had been frosted white. “Happens all the time.”
    I grabbed the first aid kit, held it under the tweezers in case I dropped the shard on the way, got up, and carried the sliver of glass to the window. The shard sparkled, casting a faint yellow shade onto the white first aid box. Hello, Mr. Clue.
    Jim frowned at the shard. “Topaz?”
    “I think so. What do you want to bet this is a piece of the Wolf Diamond?” It made sense. The Reapers wanted the Wolf Diamond so they could use it as a weapon against shapeshifters. Two plus two equaled a bloody chunk of silicate in my hand. “Do you think it prevents transformation?”
    Jim swiped it from the tweezers and sliced the flesh of his palm with a quick flick of his nails. He slid the shard into the cut.
    Green rolled over his eyes. His lips trembled. A shiver ran through his body, raising the hair on the back of his arms. His gaze had gone jaguar-wild, but his shape remained human.
    Without a word, he extracted the shard and dropped it into the lid as if it were red-hot.
    This was it. This was the weapon the rakshasas needed to destroy the Pack. The gem couldn’t be stolen; it had to be won or it would bring a curse upon its thief. They entered the Midnight Games so they could get the gem, and once they got it, they would carve it into a thousand pieces and use the shards to prevent shapeshifters from assuming their animal or warrior form. Without shapeshifting and regeneration, the Pack would become filling for the rakshasa meat grinder.
    “I must’ve stepped onto the shard when I touched the body,” Dali murmured.
    “You mean, when you stomped all over it.” Jim shook once, as if flinging water from himself. “The kid has one inside him somewhere. But the m-scanner isn’t picking it up.”
    Dali touched the shard with her fingertip. “It’s so small. The scanner might not be sensitive enough to detect it with low magic.”
    “I don’t want to slice him to ribbons looking for it. He might not make it. There has to be another way,” Jim said.
    The plan shaped up in my head. “I’m going to Macon.”
    Jim blinked and a light sparked in his eyes. “Julie, your ward. She is in school near Macon. And she’s a hell of a sensate.”
    Julie, the kid whom I met during the flare, had a one-in-a-million talent. She was a sensate and she could read the colors of magic better than any m-scanner. She was studying in the best boarding school I could get her into, only two hours away by ley line.
    I nodded. “If anybody can find the shard in Derek’s body, she will.”

CHAPTER 21

    I TAPPED MY FINGERS ON THE COUNTER, THE phone to my ear, and checked the gauze I pressed against my ribs. Still