“The one you call a goddess. Artemis. Was she, like, an angel?” I had a feeling that she had been anarcenciel, but I had never gotten evidence to back up my hunch.
“No. Angels are all male, in every scripture and history.No females existed. Ever. Despite the pretty sculptures in graveyards and paintings that Christians hang on their walls.”
Which I knew. I wanted to ask how angels procreated with only one gender, but that wasn’t germane to this discussion. “So she was, what? And this time, don’t blow me off, Gee. I need the answer.”
The slight man shrugged. “She belonged to the tribe that eventually became the Greeks. She was a prototype to modern-day witches but with the ability to charm and control any animal on Earth and in the sea. She was a legend who was elevated to the status of goddess by the worship of foolish humans around her. She was grace and beauty and power and wisdom.”
I said, “Was. She.Arcenciel?” I enunciated.
“I do not know,Enforcer.”
My title, being used to call attention to his purpose. I asked, “How did something get hold of your magic and make you attack me? Who has that kind of power?”
He looked at me from the corner of his eyes. “There are few who might wield such might. Perhaps you, skinwalker?”
This was getting me nowhere. I felt like I was dancing around the rim of a fire pit, almost on the edge of being scorched, almost on the edge of nothing at all. And the pain in my hand was growing steadily worse. I could smell my blood on the air. Eli knelt beside me and placed a linen tea napkin below my hand to absorb my blood. “You told me once to ask one of the Old Ones what it meant to be goddess-born. What is an Old One?”
“One of my kind would do. One of the oldarcencielswould do. You might ask Thales, Arcesilaus, Socrates, Plato, or Aristotle. Even Hegesinus of Pergamon might know.”
Recognizing some of the names, I said, “They’re all dead.”
“True. The oldest of the weres might know. Alas, I do not. I am only a few thousand years in age, not as ancient as the maker of were-kind. But the witches of old were different from the witches of this day. They were the firstof the magic users, and they”—his head tilted from side to side as he searched for a word—“are our forbearers. The termgoddesscame from them, the women of power.”
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the sofa. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Fine. I accept that your magic is something more intrinsic and less ritual-based than modern-day witch gifts.” I opened my eyes, focused on Gee, and said, “Tell me about the spell of watching that you put on my palms and in my soul home when you healed me of the were-taint.”
Gee sat bolt upright and I caught a hint of blue flaring light, like an aura, the action of his magics, the layers of glamours that hid what he was to the world.
“Tell me about the blue eyes and handprints that claimed me as your own. Molly Everhart Trueblood said I stole your watching magics. Then I burned them off and out of my soul home. And then I used the last eye I had scraped of the walls to track you down.”
Gee stared at me, his face unreadable. A waiting silence stretched between us before he said, “You should not have been able to find me through my own magics. You should not have been able to burn them away. No one should. No one but Artemis.”
I gestured with my right hand to Eli and the small carved wooden box on the table near him. “The person who used the magic on the brooches used a form of the watching magics to spy on me, to read me. I think they got to me so easily though the remnants of your original spell. I think that because they used the same seeing eye on my palm, but greenish, not your woad blue. We’re going to open the box, and you are going to tell me what you can about the energies on the brooches, and how their magic worked on your spell.”
“Should we take the box elsewhere to open it again?” Bruiser asked.
“No,” I said. “He should see what happens if it happens again. He can maybe tell us something about it.”
Slowly, as if he was defusing a bomb, Eli opened the box. The stink of iron, salt, and burned-hair magic filled the air, nose curling even to Eli. The energies of twobrooches were far more than simply the sum of their magic. It felt like the magic squared. I wanted to take them home and have Molly and Evan inspect them. But for now I watched as Gee DiMercy sniffed the brooches, then extended a hand over them, as if feeling for radiant heat. Finally he picked one up and hefted it, as if checking the weight, held it to the light overhead. Then he placed it back in the box. “It is unlike my magics. It is purely witch magic, but a working that draws from many doctrines and follows more than one set of principles. It is my feeling that it was constructed specifically for you, not me, Enforcer, and that you are correct in saying that it passed to me through the old healing I performed when we first met. Its purpose is to read and understand. To control. To pacify. And to enslave.”
That was nothing new.
“But the main peculiarity of the workings contained in the brooches is that they can fuse the energies of differing magics and use them. If the magics found a place in your spirit that was still touched by the memory of my magics, it was able to read that and return the information to the creators of the spells, who could then craft a new working using that information. And it would be able to use any other magics it discovered.” He looked again at my left hand. “Even the magics that belong to you alone. I have never seen such a thing.”
“So could it also have traced back, through me to you, and used your magics against you?”
Leo said, “Girrard? Is this why you attacked my Enforcer? Because your magics were turned to another’s purpose?”
Gee’s face was pinched with worry, his black hair falling over his ears, tangled in front of his eyes. “It is possible. I do not recall much of the duel between Jane and me. I recall only a sense of euphoria and bliss. I do not recall other than the emotions of great joy. Until I smelled her blood. Then I began to awaken.”
I needed to think, to meditate, to find some kind of healing, but my pain was too great and this was too important. I managed “Okay,” thinking about other things thathad been inside, or part of, my soul home. Eli poured me glass of cold water and I took it in my good hand and drank it empty before passing it back. Casually, watching Leo’s face, I asked, “Do you think the green magic could reach out and control Leo?”
The expressions that flitted across the face of the Master of the City of New Orleans were too swift and too numerous for me to catch, all except the ones that rode the crest of the emotional storm. Shock. Recognition of danger, followed by fury. Realization that he had screwed up majorly when he tried to force a binding on me, a binding that might let him be controlled or attacked through me. I almost said,Karmic payback is such a bitch,but I held it in and let a sweet smile onto my face, waiting him out. “I will have Grégoire drink of me regularly,” he said stiffly. “If there is external magic he will detect it.” With those words, Leo left the room.
As the door swung closed behind him, I said very softly, “Karma’s payback is a bitch.” There was the barest movement of the door handle that let me know Leo had heard.
CHAPTER 9
Drugged Dream in My Soul Home
