Read Lupi 08 - Death Magic for Free Online

hand out.
    Lily shook it, smiling at what she learned from that touch. Also from relief. She hadn’t wanted Ruben to be married to a stuck-up bitch. “You weren’t snubbing me. You’re shy.” Not just wary or self-protective, which was learned behavior. Shyness seemed to be more innate.
    “The experts are calling it social anxiety disorder these days, but I like the old word better. Yes, I’m shy.”
    “That must be difficult for a teacher.”
    A sudden smile lit her face. “Teaching is different. It’s helped me get over myself to some extent. These days I bumble along fairly well most of the time, but now and then I just seize up, like I did with you. Then I torture myself about how stupid or cold or awful I must have seemed. Shyness is really very selfish, very inward.”
    “So’s grief, but we don’t blame people for feeling it.”
    Deborah blinked. “I like you,” she said, as if startled by the notion. She tipped her head. “When we shook hands I expected you to say something about my, well . . . my little Gift.”
    “I don’t speak of what I learn from touch unless there’s a compelling reason, not unless I know it’s okay. Some people dislike having others know.” Earth magic always felt warm to Lily, warm and sandy and slow. A major Earth Gift felt weighty as well, as if the bones and boulders of the earth were pressing up from the sandy surface. Deborah’s Gift wasn’t major, but it was clear and vivid, the sign of someone who used a Gift regularly.
    “I am a little uncomfortable discussing it,” Deborah admitted as they started for the pool area. “It’s not as if my parents were Orthodox. They aren’t very religious at all, but I think they see magic as cheating. Certainly they consider it distasteful, not something one should speak of in public. I was raised to keep my ability secret.”
    “So was I.” Lily had known Ruben was Jewish, but had the fuzzy notion he was a Jew by heritage more than belief—maybe because the subject of religion had never come up. She hadn’t known that Deborah was Jewish in any sense. She looked so very English. “Back when I was with homicide, I never told anyone I was a sensitive. That was partly because I’d been raised not to speak of it, but also I worried about being used to out someone, you know?”
    Deborah nodded. “Torquemada.”
    “Among others, yeah.” Sensitives had been used before, during, and after the Purge to find those of the Blood as well as those “tainted” by magic, but Spain’s Grand Inquisitor was the sensitive everyone had heard about. As mass murderers go, he was outranked by Hitler, Lenin, and Pol Pot, but he’d tortured way more than the nine or ten thousand he’d had burned at the stake. “It took a while to get used to being out, but I like it better this way. Lots better.”
    “I don’t exactly keep my Gift secret. I just don’t mention it.”
    Lily gave her a wry look.
    Deborah grimaced. “I guess that amounts to the same thing. Does magic run in your family?”
    “On my father’s side, yes, though he isn’t Gifted himself. Why?”
    “Oh, I’ve gotten interested in the genetics of it. Particularly after we found out how Ruben’s trace of sidhe blood affects him—first with that allergy problem, then by saving his life. Do you know Arjenie Fox?”
    “Sure.” Arjenie was newly mate-bonded to Rule’s brother, Benedict—the only other Chosen in North America. That was a deep, dark secret, of course, but Lily had already known the woman. Arjenie was an FBI researcher.
    “I was so surprised when she moved to California. But love does have its way with us, doesn’t it? She’s been helping me. Just as a favor, in her spare time,” Deborah added hastily. “She isn’t using government time or facilities.”
    Lily smothered a smile. She suspected Arjenie would use any facilities she wanted. She was highly ethical, but her ethics didn’t run along the same lines as the bureaucracy’s. “Now that I