Lupi 08 - Death Magic

quick,” she told Lily, leaning comfortably on her forearms, crossed on the round kitchen table. “I’m not going anywhere.”
    “I’m supposed to, though.” Lily finished the corned beef sandwich she’d thrown together and reached for her glass of milk. She was usually a Diet Coke girl, but corned beef demanded milk. “Tell me something. Your Gift doesn’t work on me, so why is it you can peek inside my body?”
    “Same reason Mr. Gorgeous here can see your magic,” she said promptly. “It’s not vision I use, but it’s a way of sensin’.” She flashed Cullen an amused smile. He looked all twitchy with the need to interrupt . . . but she was a Rhej. Even Cullen managed a modicum of respect with a Rhej. “An’ he’s just dyin’ to argue with me and explain it all real pretty, but you don’t need all that talk. Does the Nokolai Rhej sense where you are, even though she can’t see a thing?”
    “Well . . . yes. But she’s a physical empath.”
    “But your magic doesn’t keep her from sensing you. The way I see it, physical empathy’s a lot like healing, but a physical empath has all her Gift sittin’ on the sensing side of things. A healer has a bit of that sensing, only we have to lay on hands to do it, and then we can look under the skin, not just on the top. But it’s a sense, not that different from when Cullen here senses the shape of your magic.” She smiled. “You ’bout ready to begin?”
    Lily’s stomach jittered unhappily. She didn’t think it was the corned beef. “I guess so. Do I need to do anything?” The only healer who’d worked on Lily before was Nettie. This woman’s methods might be different. Probably were, because she wasn’t a shaman like Nettie was. Same Gift, different practice.
    “Just a few questions first. Tell me about these headaches of yours. You’ve had three of them?”
    “Yeah. They hurt pretty bad, but didn’t last long. The first was just for seconds. A minute or less the second time. I’m not sure about the third.”
    “Just over a minute,” Rule said. “I didn’t time it, but it was probably between one and two minutes.”
    “Okay,” the Rhej said. “Where’d it hurt?”
    “Here.” Lily rubbed the back of her head. “Um . . . the third time it happened, I was exhausted afterward. I couldn’t stay awake.”
    “Any dizziness? Nausea? Weakness in one place more’n another? Any change in vision?”
    “You mean like a migraine aura?”
    “Any kind of change.”
    Lily shook her head. “I felt dizzy after it happened the third time. Exhausted. No nausea, though. I thought it might be some kind of migraine. My aunt has migraines.”
    “Let’s find out. Give me your hands.” The older woman stretched her hands across the table to Lily.
    The Rhej had warm hands with wide palms and long fingers . . . and lots of magic. Healing magic, yes, and Lily loved to touch a healer’s magic. If air could experience touch, it would feel like this beneath the slow stir of the summer sun, with new-grown grass blades brushing against it like a friendly cat. But there was more. Lily felt that more, banked and waiting and massive—the fur-and-pine prickle of lupi magic.
    A Rhej could, at need, draw upon the magic of the entire clan. Lily had no idea how. The Rhej was fully human. She didn’t hold the mantle, couldn’t affect it, wasn’t part of it. But she could use it to do what the Rho could not.
    The Rhej’s face smoothed out, her eyes losing focus. She hummed softly . . . “Amazing Grace,” Lily realized. Maybe she did work with spiritual energy like Nettie did. Lily didn’t feel anything. No wave of seeking magic touched her skin. She didn’t get sleepy the way she usually did when Nettie examined her, but Nettie almost always ended up putting her in sleep, so . . .
    “Cullen,” the woman said in a low, soft voice, “I want you to look at that passenger of hers. Look real close and careful.”
    Rule frowned. “What is it?”
    The Rhej shook her head without replying. Cullen slipped out of his chair and knelt on one knee beside Lily. “Push away from the table so I can see.”
    “I can’t . . .” But the Rhej let go of Lily’s hands so she could. She scooted her chair back and tried not to fidget while Cullen moved in front of her and stared intently at her abdomen. After a bit he frowned. He started muttering under his breath—it sounded like an unholy mix of Hawaiian and Norwegian—while he sketched signs in the air. He