Shadow Rites

“The lightning strike was probably a deliberate attack on you.” She enunciated the last words as if I was too dense to understand them.

“Okay.”

“That’s it? Okay?”

I shrugged again and applied powder over the concealer. Then chose a tube of red lipstick, one with a hint of yellow in the tint, and put a couple of dabs of the lipstick on my cheeks and rubbed them in. I could have used some blush, but I had never been adept at getting blush shades to match my lipstick, and my face usually ended up looking wrong. With the lipstick on my cheeks, I looked marginally better, so I smeared some on my mouth and dropped all the tubes into the tackle box. “Molly, I’ve thought it through too. I figured it had to be a premeditated, well-planned attack. But I’ve made so many enemies in this town, there would no way to pick out who might be behind it.”

“A witch at the scene is the most likely offender.”

And Molly had told the witches some things about me. Not secrets exactly. Probably all in innocence, but . . . still. It had hurt. “Yeah. I know.” I blew out a breath and sat back on the corner of the bed to slip into the shoulder holster and secure the matching Walther PK .380s. With my best friend in the world watching, I pulled on boots. I was wearing the fancy-schmancy ones Leo had given me. Lucchese, hand-stitched, one-of-a-kind, gorgeous boots, which I loved to death. Grunting, I said, “I figured that out back when the lightning happened.”

“All an attacking witch or witches would have needed was something of yours—hair, fingernail clipping. If they had that, the assault could even have been long-distance, directed to the working and targeted on you.”

Keeping my voice carefully expressionless as I slipped into my lightweight jacket and tugged it to fit over the weapons, I said, “I clip my own nails. I’ve never had my hair cut. The likelihood of someone getting genetic material from me by going through my garbage isn’t impossible, but it also wouldn’t be easy.” I hesitated before saying the next part, but it needed to be said, to clear the air between us. “Unless you’re telling me you gave them something of mine, which I don’t believe.” I dropped my gaze to the floor, not wanting to look at Molly. “But you did tell the witches things about me.” I could hear the hurt in my voice, and knew that Molly could too.

“They asked me about you. I confirmed things that were readily available on the Internet and on your business Web site. I never told them secrets. And I never gave anyone genetic material. You know that I would never do that.” Molly gripped her skirt in her fingers, a new, nervous habit. “Don’t you?”

And I did. But knowing it intellectually was one thing; hearing the truth in her words, smelling the truth on her body, made me feel better. “Yeah. I do,” I said. “Wait.” I blinked slowly, eyes closed, letting memories stir together inside me. Beast had said, Jane has hair.

“That was back then,” I said, the words coming slowly as my brain flew through possibilities. “Now, with this witch scan spell, I keep smelling burned hair.”

Molly’s perfect bow lips parted.

My hair? Yes . . . maybe it had been my hair. And if so, then it was a very specific spell, a black-magic spell tied to my genetic material. If Molly was right, then the people at the lightning debacle in the vamp cemetery were part of what was happening now. “What if . . . What if you’re right and they burned my hair? That would explain why the spell was so specific, and so deeply attuned to me. Then and now.”

“No one does DNA-specific spells anymore except for healing spells, and they take a coven of at least five well-balanced witches. Without that, the workings are too delicate and fall apart too easily. They’re unpredictable and end up flying.” When a spell didn’t work, Molly made a paper airplane and flew it across the room to entertain the children. Her eyes traveled left and right slowly as she put that together with what we knew. She said haltingly, “Until I met you, I thought I understood magic. But now? Anything is possible.”

“But if we’re right, where did they get my hair to use in a spell? Unless someone else is involved. Like, maybe someone took a hair sample from a workout mat or skin scraping or blood from HQ after a battle or sweat after a workout or a spar.” I gave Molly what might have been a small smile and she nodded, the motion jerky, not happy. “It’s possible. I’m putting my money on a disgruntled vamp working with the two witches who attacked my house and me. If Edmund hadn’t just sworn to me, I’d say he was a perfect possibility, having lost his status and wanting to get back at the whole vamp power struggle. But . . . someone like him.”

Molly pulled a piece of paper from her pocket and walked to me. I didn’t want to, but I took the paper and unfolded it to see a list of nine names. Only Lachish Dutillet and Molly and the two witches who went by akas were familiar to me. Some had no last names, which was odd. She said, “Lachish says you never asked her for a list of the witches who were there, in the cemetery, that night, so I asked for you. This is all of them. All of us.”

No last names. I didn’t know how to point that out. When I didn’t say anything, her scent spiked with adrenaline and grief pheromones. She asked, “If you thought it might be a targeted attack, why didn’t you ask me for the names? Did you think I would pick witches over you?”

“I didn’t want to . . . put you on the spot?” Make you choose. That was what I meant, and Molly seemed to know that. Her scent spiked, hot and peppery with anger. Again. Pregnancy emotional swings.