Lupi 08 - Death Magic

She frowned and took the ring off, then slid it back on. “How in the world did he get it off my finger without me noticing?”
    “That I can’t tell you. Harry would be deeply wounded if you called him a thief, though. Taking your ring was part of the game. Brownies play it constantly. I don’t know all the rules, but I think anything that’s in plain sight is fair game. If they snitch something and leave without you noticing, you have to pay a forfeit to get it back. The forfeits can be quite imaginative.”
    “And if you catch them, they just give it back. They don’t have to pay a forfeit?”
    “There are points involved,” Karonski said. “But don’t ever ask them how the points are figured. The scoring seems to change on a whim.”
    “Huh.” Lily frowned at her ring. Harry should not have been able to remove it without her feeling it move. He couldn’t have used magic on her, so how . . .
    Cullen breezed back into the kitchen “The runt’s gone? Good.”
    “Why do you dislike Harry?” Lily asked.
    “Because he’s a sneaky little bugger.”
    Rule said dryly, “Several years ago, before Cullen got those shields, a brownie snitched an old document he’d recently acquired. He wanted it back badly enough to pay the forfeit—which meant running around the block three times. Backward.”
    “The little bastards ran alongside me and laughed the whole time. I couldn’t see them, but I damn sure heard them.” Cullen sat at the table. “Sneaky little buggers, every one. Now, I’ve got to meet Fagin’s lawyer at the bank in an hour, so we have to be quick. And don’t give me a hard time about rushing off,” he told Lily. “If we’re really lucky, that grimoire will give me something solid about dopplegängers. What I’ve got is rumor and conjecture and not worth much. Oh, and you may be getting a call from a priest.”
    “A priest.”
    He nodded. “The one who married me and Cynna. Father Michaels. Cynna’s going to call him. It’s possible the Church knows something about dopplegängers.”
    “You discussed this with Cynna over the phone? I don’t like to be paranoid, but your phone could be tapped.”
    Rule spoke. “Cullen has a new spell that’s supposed to block anyone trying to listen in technologically. I have no idea how it works, but it’s tricky and requires physical components. Which I imagine is the real reason he made his calls in his room.”
    “Okay.” She looked at Cullen. “And you think the Church knows something about dopplegängers.”
    “Something, yes.” He shrugged. “The pope declared them anathema back in the sixteenth century and trained a special group of priests to banish them. That’s one reason the rumors about them never quite died out—the Church took them seriously.”
    “The sixteenth century was a long time ago. Surely this Father Michaels won’t know how to banish dopplegängers.”
    “No, but he’s got a mentor who’s pretty far up the ladder in the Jesuits. Those people know how to hang on to information—and secrets. If anyone has anything solid about dopplegängers, it’ll be them. The real question is whether Father Michaels can pry anything loose from his buddy.”
    “I’m going to have to go pretty soon, too,” Karonski said. “But I’ve got a question for Seabourne first.”
    “Shoot.”
    “If it was a dopplegänger that put the potion in Ruben’s coffee, does that mean we don’t have a traitor in the Bureau?”
    Lily’s heart jumped. She hadn’t thought of that.
    “Afraid not,” Cullen said, “if what little I think I know about dopplegängers turns out to be true. Dopplegängers are physical doubles, but they don’t get the mind and memories of the original. They have to be piloted or controlled, and the pilot has to be fairly close to the dopplegänger. I don’t know how close, but Ruben’s office is in a subbasement. Underground, in other words. Earth blocks mind-magic, so the pilot pretty much had to be on the same level as the dopplegänger to direct it.”
    Lily drummed her fingers on the table. “So making dopplegängers takes lots of power, which our perps are supplying with death magic. They’re made mostly of water, and they don’t have minds of their own—”
    “Hold off on the assuming. They don’t have the original’s mind and memories. Whether or not they can think, if they’re aware at all, I have no idea. A couple more things that all the accounts agree on. They’re temporary