Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

by what they'd plundered that might prove useful. The door their captors had left through - the one leading to the stairs - was locked by both magic and a dead bolt. The other door led to a tiny bathroom with a chemical toilet, a tiny sink, and five five-gallon bottles of water.
    "This is probably where they've been holed up themselves. They didn't expect to use it as a jail." The lightbulbs were an especially odd find because there wasn't actually any electricity in their little cell, as a bit of investigation had shown. The bulbs plugged into the ceiling glowed anyway.
    "I bet some of this stuff was already here when they made this their hideout. Most of the stuff here is pretty old, like someone stockpiled it years ago."
    "Could be." Among their finds were five extra lightbulbs. Unlike those in the ceiling, they didn't glow. Lily had broken one and was wiggling the longest shard of glass loose from the socket. "Their schedule got pushed up when Johnny went after Cullen on his own, putting him in danger. I'm betting they've got something else in mind for us, long-term. It isn't ready yet."
    "Makes sense. That ready?" She held out her hand.
    "As ready as I can make it." Lily gave her the long glass sliver.
    Cynna took it and closed her eyes. She sat cross-legged, her lips moving, though Lily didn't hear anything.
    The sorcerer had taken Cynna before he and the Chimei rained madness on a square mile of the city. She'd been stopped at a traffic light, on her way back to Sam's lair after dropping Nettie off at Clanhome; he'd hit her with a sleep spell. That was all she knew until she woke up, hands cuffed behind her, in the back of an old panel van.
    There'd been two young toughs watching her. Members of the Padres, Lily thought, judging by what Cynna reported about their clothing and tattoos.
    Abruptly Cynna stopped her silent chant and slashed her arm with the glass. Blood welled up in the shallow cut. Quickly she dragged a small plastic knife through it.
    "It looks the same," Lily said dubiously. Except that the plastic was still white and pristine, without a drop of blood on it. Weird.
    "Let's see what it does." Cynna ripped a page out of a magazine and drew the knife down the paper - which split as if the serrated plastic were a razor blade. She grinned. "Damn, I'm good."
    "You are, but did I mention that you're sounding more like Cullen all the time?"
    "I think you did. Got another one for me?"
    They had three plastic knives. Now that they knew Cynna's spell worked, they needed two more glass shards, but they had to be at least two inches long. "The rest of the pieces aren't long enough. I'll break another lightbulb."
    The next bulb shattered into way too many tiny pieces. Lily's lips thinned. Her hand felt shaky as she reached for another one. Easy does it, she told herself. She hadn't wrecked their chances by wrecking one lightbulb.
    The next lightbulb broke perfectly, leaving three long, lovely pieces. Lily handed her one. "I should sweep up the broken glass first." They had a broom, an actual broom. They planned to make it nice and pointy at one end, using the newly sharp plastic knives.
    "Wait till I'm finished. This takes a whopping lot of concentration." Cynna closed her eyes again.
    They were being careful about what they said out loud. Lily hadn't found a camera or a bug, but there might be something she'd missed. And Cynna thought their captors might be able to eavesdrop magically. "They couldn't listen every minute," she'd said, "because they have other things to do, and they'd have to concentrate to listen in that way. But we'd better assume they can hear us."
    Lily had asked if that kind of listening was mind-magic, or another kind. Mind-magic wouldn't work on her, but a spell that picked up sounds would pick up her voice as well as anyone else's.
    "It's not mind-magic," Cynna had said, "but I don't have a clue how it's done. We know it's possible, but I don't think anyone in this realm knows how."
    "Anyone but Johnny, you mean?"
    "It seems possible. He knew a lot about Cullen, didn't he? I've been thinking about that. If this Chimei's been around a few centuries, she could know a lot of spells that are lost to the rest of us. That's probably why her pet sorcerer could do that sleep-spell bomb. It's something she taught him."
    So Cynna chanted silently as she turned a plastic knife into a potentially deadly weapon. And Lily didn't refer to their plans for the broom, once she'd swept up the broken