Lupi 08 - Death Magic

managed to convey the details of such a spell in a dream, he lacks the training and experience to execute it.”
    “You’re sure.”
    “Spellwork isn’t just saying some fancy words while you stir together eyes of newt and toes of frog. You have to know what you’re doing in blood, body, and brain, and the only way to get that kind of knowledge is through practice and lots of it. It’s like the difference between watching football and playing it. Armchair quarterbacks might be able to analyze the hell out of a play, but they couldn’t execute it.”
    “The Great Bitch is an Old One. Couldn’t she just inject that kind of knowledge into Friar when she gave him his Gift?”
    “Not according to my sources—whose names wouldn’t mean much to you, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” He sipped again. “But that’s why she gave Friar a Gift, not a lot of fancy spells. He won’t be able to use any but very basic spells for a good, long time.”
    “Bring that pot over here, would you? I wonder why mindspeech doesn’t work across realms.” She made a note to ask Mika about that.
    “You’re sure that it doesn’t?” Rule asked.
    “Based on the fact that she hasn’t been doing it all along, yeah, that seems a good bet.” She frowned at her notebook. “If illusion is out, what does that leave us?”
    Cullen carried the pot back to the table with him. “I didn’t say illusion was out. I said an illusion spell was extremely unlikely. There’s still the possibility of an illusion Gift.” He set the pot by her elbow and sat down. “That Gift has never appeared in a human, but elven lords often develop it. I suspect illusion is the mature form of their innate ability to cast a glamour.”
    Lily drummed her fingers. She truly and deeply did not want to be dealing with another sidhe lord. The one they’d encountered last month had been more than enough. Still, she noted the possibility . . . and caught a glimpse of her watch. “Shit. I’m going to have to rush through the rest of the questions, or leave some for later. You’ll be here later?”
    “I’ll be around.” For some reason, that amused him. “You have a time clock to punch?”
    “Drummond wants me at Headquarters at eight. I’m supposed to vet every agent on the team—make sure none of them are tainted by death magic. Which takes me to my next question. How long would the taint linger in someone who took part in a death magic ritual?”
    “There’s an easy one to answer. I don’t know.”
    “If you could give me some idea—”
    “Anything I tell you is likely to be wrong. Your Gift is going to find traces that non-sensitives can’t, but I don’t know how long those traces linger—too damn little to go on and too many variables. Some people are more”—he gestured vaguely—“more porous than others. They’d soak up more. Plus it would depend on how many participants were at the ritual, whether the sacrifice was animal or human, and how many were sacrificed.”
    “How many? You mean there could be more than one victim at a single ritual?”
    “Sure. Theoretically, the only limit comes from how much power the chief celebrant can absorb or channel. The old Aztecs managed to do at least a thousand people a day when they consecrated their temple.”
    “A thousand a day.”
    “Some experts put it much higher. I suspect they wasted most of the power, but you’ve got to give them points for enthusiasm.”
    “No,” she said, “I don’t. You think it could have been animal sacrifice?”
    “Could be. The Azá used animal sacrifice.”
    “That’s not what they had in mind when they grabbed me.”
    “Human sacrifice is needed for a major working, sure, if you’re powering that working through death magic. But the real question is why they used death magic at all.”
    Lily frowned. “What do you mean?”
    “Spells that kill don’t need mega-oomphs of power. How much depends on the precision of the spell and the skill of the caster, but anyone with a strong Gift should have enough power on his own to enspell a knife to kill. So why involve at least four more people? Why use death magic?”
    “Could it be someone with a weak Gift? Or someone who doesn’t know what he’s doing? Maybe he or she thought they had to use death magic to kill.”
    “That’s . . .” Cullen stopped. Scowled. “Never underestimate the power of ignorance. Yeah, that’s possible. There is so much hogwash out there masquerading as