Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

to?
    Automatically, Lily started to jot those questions down. She stopped with "how would."
    Her notebook could be produced in court. She didn't want to be cross-examined about mindspeech or partaking of dragon nature on the witness stand.
    She went back to the original question. How could she stop the Chimei?
    From what Li Qin had said, the bond between the Chimei and her lover had something to do with keeping the Chimei physical, or with her ability to affect people's minds, or both. Lily needed to know more about that.
    Grandmother, she wrote. And underlined it. And added Cullen's name beside it. Either the Chimei or her lover considered him a real threat. He might have some ideas about how to break that bond without resorting to murder.
    Okay, assume she found the sorcerer. She knew a few things about him now, and she had a lead to follow, thanks to Dr. Davis. Assume she learned how to break his bond with the Chimei... big assumption there, but was that bond anything like the one she knew so much and so little about? The mate bond that tied her to Rule?
    If so, did the Chimei have to be physically close to her lover?
    She underlined that question. It would sure be handy if the answer was "yes." Separate the two and maybe both would be weakened or incapacitated.
    Skip past the assumptions, though, and the question was: how did she arrest a sorcerer? His magic couldn't affect Lily directly, but if he started a fire, she'd burn. And if he knew how to call mage fire... A shiver of remembered pain turned her hands clammy.
    Last year, Cullen had used mage fire to destroy an ancient staff. They weren't certain if the scar on Lily's stomach came from the mage fire itself or from the intense heat it produced. Supposedly she was immune to magical fire, but mage fire was different. Black fire, it was called. Cullen said it could burn anything.
    Another difference with mage fire was that the heat was oddly contained. Localized. Cullen thought that the black fire consumed most of the very heat it produced. But the staff had been touching her when Cullen zapped it, so even highly localized heat could have burned her.
    They couldn't very well test the two ideas to see which one was right. Aside from the general danger - mage fire was hard to control - Lily had no intention of letting Cullen try crisping some part of her.
    Enough of that. Did this sorcerer know how to call mage fire? It was supposed to be a lost art, but Cullen had reinvented it. Someone else could have, too. She made a note to ask Cullen about that and what other tricks the sorcerer might possess.
    And how did you lock up a sorcerer, anyway? Back in the days of the Purge they'd made life simpler for themselves by cutting off hands, chopping off tongues, that sort of thing. Not options the federal penal system could adopt.
    Clearly she'd been shaken after hearing Sam's story. She'd missed asking several questions. If Sam couldn't or wouldn't answer them, Li Qin might be able to. Or Grandmother.
    Where was she? Lily underlined Grandmother a second time. That was one question she might be able to answer... with a little help from a friend. Cynna was one hell of a Finder.
    And what in God's name was Sam up to?
    He was manipulating them. She was sure of it. Maybe he had to because the geas forced him to be devious. Maybe he had, like Li Qin had said, a good goal in mind. But she didn't like it.
    "You so deep into your scribbling you didn't see me?" T.J. demanded. "If I'd been a bad guy, I could've popped you."
    "I saw you," Lily said without looking up as she finished jotting down one more thing. "Even if I hadn't, the server's headed this way with our plates, so it stands to reason you'd be here."
    He grinned and pulled out his chair. "I've got great timing. That's what Camille always tells me, and she ought to know." He waggled his eyebrows.
    "Have I given you any reason to think I'd want to hear about your sex life?"
    "I've seen you checking out my ass. Did you order me... Ah, here it is. Extra jalapenos. Thanks, sugar."
    T.J. could not be brought to believe that waitresses didn't always like being called sugar. Lily accepted her plate with a nod of thanks, turned the page in her notebook to a blank one, and said, "Let's talk about the Xings. What have you got?"
     
    Rule finished his account of what he and Lily had learned. There was a long pulse of silence.
    He had three listeners - Cullen, Cynna, and Max. Jason was present, but sound asleep; Nettie had left to