Heart's Blood(28)

"Keep going," Grey snapped out. "The night ages while you loiter."

"Yes, sir." Duncan stiffened to an almost military attention, and moved on down the perimeter of the room.

Pearl gave Grey an aggrieved look. What was wrong with him? Did he want to do this fast, or properly?

On some contrary whim, she crouched down and brushed her hands along the wooden floor. Wizardry was plants. Wood was from plants, so perhaps a little residue of wizardry lingered.

Grey huffed an impatient breath. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for wizardic residue," she retorted. Stated. Calmly and with consideration. "You did want me looking for wizardry, didn't you?"                       
       
           



       

"I did not say you should crawl along the floor. Get up."

Pearl ignored him. Not for the sake of disobedience, or proving any point, though she did wish he would moderate his tone. She ignored him because she sensed something in the wood.

She moved a few steps further in a scooting crouch and felt again, sweeping her hand over the floor. A splinter stabbed deep into the mound below her thumb causing a sharp pain, but she ignored it, too, to follow the magic. It hovered right on the edge of her secondary vision, but she couldn't bring it into focus. It felt wizardish, given what she knew of wizardry, which wasn't much. But it felt . . . green. Or maybe it smelled green.

Absently, she pulled the splinter from her hand and went back to her search, inching a few feet further to brush her fingertips along the floorboards there. Something . . . Something . . .

"You're bleeding," Grey whispered in her ear as he knelt beside her, surrounding her with his arms, his body. He cupped her hand and turned it upward, exposing the fat drop of blood that had welled up from the splinter's puncture.

She stared as he raised her hand and closed his mouth over the mound of her palm. He licked away the blood in a wickedly sensual kiss. She shuddered, magic flaring sweet and hot between them. She soaked it up, shared it with him as he licked her hand one more time. He shuddered in turn, his eyes falling closed as the magic surged through him.

Pearl felt as if she could touch him inside and out, open him up and see all his workings-mind and body. The thought frightened her. She pulled back inside herself, though she left the magic behind. She felt better, more energized. It should help Grey the same. She drew away physically, just in time.

Duncan must have noticed them no longer following, for he turned back from his brick inspecting. "Are you all right, Miss Parkin? Commander?"

Grey made a face. He much preferred the title of magister to the military sounding "commander" they'd foisted on him when the new I-Branch was created.

Pearl realized she hadn't backed out far enough. She tried again to distance herself magically, and thought she did better this time as she scrambled to her feet. Perhaps more physical distance helped as well.

"I got a splinter." She showed Duncan her hand, but pulled it back when he made as if to take hold and inspect it, uncomfortable with the idea of his touch. The barely heard rumble from Grey convinced her it was a bad idea. What was wrong with him? Other than Pearl somehow crawling inside his head?

Grey seemed a bit stunned still, actually sitting on the floor rather than kneeling.

Hoping to give him time to recover from whatever had happened when he kissed her hand, Pearl kept talking. "I thought I sensed wizardry."

Though if that were a mere hand-kissing, she was seven feet tall and Chinese.

Grey held up a hand and Pearl automatically took it, forgetting about the bizarre magic exchange that seemed to happen every time they touched bare-handed. He shuddered again, his eyes flying open to seize on hers. Then he used his grip on her to pull himself to his feet.

"What, exactly, did you sense?" he asked, releasing her hand in an odd combination of haste and reluctance.

"I don't think a spell was worked." She didn't know how to describe what she'd sensed, nor did she know much about wizardry or how its spells worked or how they felt when they did.

"Could have been a potion," Duncan suggested. "A potion would have made the victim malleable, easier to bring to the warehouse."

"Likely so," Grey agreed. "Make a note. Let's move on."

Duncan turned and proceeded along the wall again. Pearl hung back, but Grey was emphatically not looking at her.

She asked him anyway, whispered, "Why did you do that? Lick up the blood?"

"Blood should always be handled carefully." His eyes slid toward the other man, as he spoke more softly than she had.

Everyone knew that. It was why, like every other woman in England, she burned the rags she used every month. The rag trade was a lucrative one. Still . . . "Yes, but why handle it like that? Why lick it?"

"I-" A dozen answers flickered through his eyes, all of them true. She wasn't inside his head, couldn't hear his thoughts, but she knew.

Heat rose in his eyes then, as if he had selected desire as the least dangerous among those true answers. A tremor went through Pearl in response, her body's reaction to that heated look. He captured her hand again, the magic surging forward to crash over them as the wave broke.

He lifted it to his mouth and pressed a kiss to the cup of her palm, his lips hot and soft, and damp where they parted. Pearl's tremor grew until she quivered. His tongue darted out in a swift, sleek, pointed caress, and her knees buckled. She caught herself, stiffening both knees and resolve.

"Does that answer your question?" His voice was deep and rumbly and so quiet only she could hear it.

She nodded. She feared he would offer another demonstration if she did not. She didn't need another demonstration, no matter how she wanted one. She could still see in his eyes that this was not the only answer. Not the complete answer. But she didn't think she was ready to hear the others.

They moved on through the warehouse, finding little that was not expected. The twisted, impossible conjury had indeed been the primary spell worked, though it seemed there may have been an attempt to anchor or bind it with other magics. Duncan had found a hint of alchemy lingering in the air where the sorcery had pooled, to match the wizardry traces.

When they finished, the warehouse looked just as dingy and dilapidated as before. It sported a few more stains. But it felt better. Almost fresh, definitely clean. Pearl took a deep breath, opening her senses as wide as they would go, and it still felt clean and fresh, even with the pervasive river aroma.

"Nice," Duncan said. "That's just grand. Nicer than any murder site I've ever been at."

"We've been without sorcery for so long, we didn't know how much we were missing." Grey smiled down at Pearl, and she just had to smile back. His smile went crooked, mischievous. "The entertainment factor alone, watching Simmons and his ilk hem and haw and bluster, is incalculable."

He had to do that, say something dismissive or mocking, to make people believe he didn't mean anything else he said. Pearl didn't know why he had to do it, but she knew it was what he did, what he somehow had to do. His first statement was sincere. The second wasn't, exactly.

Oh, he enjoyed watching Simmons's ilk in their shouting and blustering, no doubt about that. But entertainment was not the primary appreciation he had for sorcery. Or for Pearl. She didn't know how she felt about that, or how she ought to.

"What happens to the magic," Duncan asked when they were inside the council carriage rumbling off to Albemarle Street, "if a murder is never solved? If the innocent blood never receives its justice?"

"I don't think anyone's ever asked that question." Grey leaned against the corner of the carriage. "Magicians, for all we've been looking for someone to open the sorcery book, have mostly ignored blood magic. Hoped it would just go away."

Pearl snorted, though she tried to make it more of a ladylike humph. "That obviously hasn't worked."

Both men looked at her, expectant curiosity rising off them like steam.

"There's so much innocent-blood magic in these streets, I could fill a hundred handkerchiefs like this one-" She lifted the folded neckerchief with its little stain. "And I could do it just walking a single block. Not all of it's murder, mind. There's the bludgers and the bashers-"                       
       
           



       

The cant terms made her painstakingly acquired East End accent creep out, and she paused to clear out her mind and the accent. "Some of the blood comes from attacks that weren't fatal, from beatings or fights. It's still innocent blood. Still wants justice." She frowned. "But that justice may come easier. The victim is alive, and can perhaps seize it for himself."

"But it's been two hundred and thirty years since Yvaine was killed." Duncan leaned forward, earnest and eager. "What about the murderers who died before they were brought to justice?"

"I doubt my apprentice has the answer to that." Grey's voice was so dry it made Pearl thirsty. "I doubt any sorcery book in the library has the answer, since they were written before Yvaine's death."