Lupi 08 - Death Magic

a lot better figuring out how to eat the energy from a blow-dryer.”
    Drummond broke in impatiently. “Enough metaphysics. To make death magic, someone’s got to kill someone else. That’s where we start.”
    “It’s still death magic when the sacrifice is an animal,” Lily said, “but people give the bigger bang. I suspect our perps needed a human death, but . . .” She drummed her fingers on her thigh. “I need to consult an expert.”
    “You’re supposed to be the damn expert.”
    “You wouldn’t ask a blood splatter specialist to analyze fiber. I’m a touch sensitive. I can’t work magic, so I’ve never learned spellcasting. I need to talk to someone who knows it all—casting, theory, history.”
    “You got someone in mind? One of your Unit people?”
    “No, he’s a consultant.” Cullen Seabourne, lupus and sorcerer. Sorcerers were rare enough that some people didn’t think they existed. A lupus sorcerer was supposed to be impossible.
    Cullen did like to break the rules. “He’s got clearance,” Lily added. “The Unit uses him often. I’ll need you to approve his fee.”
    He grunted. “I need your request in writing—name, contact information, fee scale. Did Croft tell you—” His phone buzzed. He took the call, said he’d be right there, and told Mullins, “You brief her. I need to talk to Armistead.”
    “All of it?”
    “Hell, yeah. She has to know why she can’t shoot her mouth off.” He left, closing the door behind him.
    Mullins looked at her. “I hear you’ve got homicide experience.”
    “That’s right.”
    “Don’t let it go to your head.” He pulled a small pad from an inside pocket on his jacket and looked over his notes. “Bixton was a man of regular habits. Up at seven every weekday, according to the maid. Name’s Sheila Navarette—unmarried, thirty-two, lives in. She has his breakfast ready at seven thirty every weekday, and that’s when he arrived to eat it today. Eggs and toast, coffee, apple juice. While he ate, she ran the vacuum downstairs—she does that every damn day—then went to wash up the breakfast things. Passed him on her way to the kitchen about eight fifteen. She thinks he went to his office then because that was his routine, but she didn’t actually see.
    “So she cleaned up the kitchen and went upstairs, where she made the bed, tidied up, and collected the laundry. She took that down to the basement. That’s where she was at between nine thirty and ten when the doorbell rang. The doorbell rings on all three floors—basement, first floor, and second floor. She answered the door and showed the visitor in to the senator here in the living room. After determining that they didn’t want coffee or tea, she returned to the basement, where she remained, ironing the senator’s shirts, until she went upstairs to fix lunch around noon and discovered the body.”
    He looked up from his notes. There was an odd, mocking gleam in his eyes. “That’s the only visitor the senator had this morning.”
    “Are you saying we already have a suspect? Or at least a witness. You have a description? A name?”
    “Both.” He consulted his notes again ostentatiously. “Thin, average height, wore a dark gray suit with a white shirt. Pale blue tie. He was not carrying a briefcase or laptop or other object. She estimates his age as between forty and fifty. Dark hair and eyes, large nose, glasses. She hadn’t seen him there before and he didn’t have an appointment, but the senator saw him anyway.”
    “And the name?”
    Mullins smiled thinly. “Ruben Brooks.”

ELEVEN
     

     
    AT eight twenty that night Rule heard a car in the alley, followed by the sound of the garage door opening out back. He was in the kitchen, his laptop on the table, his ass in one chair, his feet in another, wearing his headset. “Okay, Andor, thanks. I appreciate your not asking us to wait for the All-Clan.”
    “Chad is unemployed at the moment. It is no difficulty for him to fly to D.C.”
    “He’ll stay here, of course, and Wythe will pay his airfare.” The Rho of Szøs clan snorted. “You speak for Wythe now as well as Leidolf and Nokolai?”
    “My father speaks for Nokolai,” Rule said mildly. He listened to the car pull into the garage, glad that Lily hadn’t worked too late. She’d texted him a couple hours ago not to wait supper on her, which could have meant she’d be home at eight or at midnight. Or later. “No one speaks for Wythe at the moment, but