Lupi 08 - Death Magic

on it. Truly she was out of practice at the subordinate thing . . . oh, yes, she’d grown unaccustomed to assholes giving her orders. “If Bixton was killed by magic, some residue may still be in his body. Where the magic lingers and how much is present makes a difference in determining the type of spell used.”
    “Does it matter what kind of spell it was? Killed by magical means is a capital crime. Doesn’t matter what kind of chanting went into it.”
    “If he’d been shot, would you want to find the bullet? Maybe—I don’t know—run some ballistics tests?”
    He grunted. “So what did you find?”
    “Nothing in his hand or face. A very small trace on his throat. I’ll need to loosen his clothing to check elsewhere, but I’ll do the knife first.” Now she pressed the back of her hand to the knife’s hilt. And grimaced. Ugly. “Death magic and lots of it. This won’t fade anytime soon. You’ll be able to get confirmation from the coven.” The only magically produced evidence that was admissible in court was that obtained by a certified Wiccan coven. The coven couldn’t do what Lily did—Gifts were stronger and more accurate than spells—but with that pretty dagger loaded with so much death magic, coven spells would do the job just fine. “Have you contacted Ms. O’Shaunessy, or shall I?”
    “Your man Croft’s supposed to be handling that. Go ahead and check for lingering magic elsewhere.”
    Maybe the asshole was capable of learning. Lily glanced at Hannah.
    Her mouth tipped down unhappily. “Okay, but I’ll unbutton him. You got more of those baby wipes?”
    While Lily cleaned her hand, Hannah knelt on the other side of the body and bent low, studying the starched landscape of Bixton’s shirt. After a moment she grunted, motioned to one of the other techs, and got tweezers and an evidence bag from him. “Looks like one of Bixton’s,” she said, depositing a single short, white hair in the Baggie, “but you never know.”
    After that, Hannah undid four buttons—enough for Lily to slide her hand in between cloth and cool, clammy flesh. Bixton turned out to have a hairy chest. That surprised her, somehow.
    “One spot where the death magic is concentrated,” she said after a careful grope. “Over the heart. It thins out evenly as I move my hand away from the center of the chest. I didn’t touch the wound, but did touch about two inches from it.” She withdrew her hand and twisted to grab her tote.
    “What does that tell you?” Drummond demanded. “Where the magic is and isn’t. What does that mean?”
    Lily scrubbed her hands with another wipe as she stood. It wasn’t touching a DB that made her feel unclean. It was the death magic. “First, that he wasn’t killed by death magic directly. It was used to power the spell that killed him, not as a sort of blunt force trauma all on its own.”
    “You can do that?” His eyebrows lifted in surprise and for a brief moment he didn’t sound pissed. “Just blast someone with death magic and it kills them?”
    “I can’t,” she said dryly, and started back toward him, avoiding the trail she’d marked with Popsicle sticks. “And I’m really damn glad to find out this perp can’t, either.” The only time she’d run up against that kind of killing, it had been done by a madwoman using an ancient staff created by the Great Bitch. The woman was dead, the staff destroyed, but presumably she could make another one if she wanted. “That the magic was heaviest over his heart suggests the spell targeted his heart specifically.”
    Drummond rubbed his jaw, eyebrows down. “Brooks’s heart attack was caused by a potion, not a spell. Never heard that death magic was involved, either.”
    “As far as I know it wasn’t, but I’m not part of that investigation. The heart is a popular target for killing spells. I had a perp a couple months ago who used a heart-stopping spell delivered by a blade.” She frowned, slid her foot a few feet to one side. She wasn’t finding a second trail of death magic. Shouldn’t the perp have leaked it coming and going?
    Not necessarily, she realized. Once the spell was discharged, there probably hadn’t been anything to leak. The odd thing was that it had leaked in the first place. Could be the perp had charged himself or herself with death magic rather than charging the blade, sending the power through the dagger when he or she struck.
    Was that likely? She needed to call Cullen.
    “Huh. Guess