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Great Bitch has tried assassination, hellgates, demon-possessed doppelgangers, explosives, dworg, destroying the U.S. through mob rule, and destabilizing the entire realm. Those didn’t work, so now she’s using butterflies? I don’t get it. Unless they’re infected in some way—”
    Nathan broke in as a thought occurred to him. “Dell, do the bug bites have poison?
Eriahu,
” he added, using the most general term for poison in the elfin tongue. Dell had known elfin longer than she had English, but her connection with Kai usually made English easier for her.
    Dell growled.
    “What does that mean?” Cullen said. “No, yes, maybe, shut up?”
    “That’s frustration. Either she doesn’t know or she isn’t sure what I mean.” Gestalt thinkers sometimes showed amazing insight, but they processed information so differently that communication was difficult.
    Nathan thought about the context of the last time he and Kai had discussed poison around Dell. Dell would understand that when he said “poison” just now, he hadn’t meant “colorless, odorless liquid added to the Devrai ambassador’s wine at an equinox celebration by an agent of the Osiga which killed him in thirty seconds,” but she’d be puzzled by which attributes of that event he wanted her to apply to the current situation. Was he talking about a substance consumed at a particular time? One administered at a celebration, or one used by Osiga agents? Something that killed, something that lacked odor, something added to wine, or something frequently given to Devrai ambassadors?
    Or maybe she was trying to sort through elements of that event he’d never noticed. Dell’s process was
different.
“Eh. Yes, I’ve confused her. I phrased my question badly. Dell, will the bug bites make Kai sick?”
    A growl. Then, “Not now sick.”
    “Later sick?”
    Silence.
    “Dei’re het ahm
Kai
insit?”
    More silence. Then: “Dots, dots, dots!” She hissed, sounding very much as she did in her other form. “
Jisen dá, oran-ahmni!
Go fast.
”
    “Dots?” Cullen repeated.
    “Dots are what she calls words,” Nathan explained.
    “And the rest of it?”
    “Roughly translated, ‘shut up, dot-eater.’ I think I’ve exhausted her patience with language.”
    None of them spoke again until they left the gravel road for the highway, where Nathan could, as promised, speed up. Eighty wouldn’t be conspicuous along this stretch, he decided. “Arjenie has some skill with magic.”
    Cullen shook his head. “If you’re wondering if she could check out Kai, the answer is no. She and I have talked spellcraft enough for me to be sure she doesn’t have anything that would help.”
    “Arjenie wasn’t bitten.” Arjenie’s Gift was far more useful than invisibility, as it extended to all the senses except touch and made her impossible to notice, but . . . “Normally, mind magic doesn’t work on insects.”
    Cullen snorted. “And you think there’s something normal about carnivorous butterflies?”
    “Not,” Dell said.
    Cullen twisted to look at her. “They’re not normal? Or they’re not carnivorous?”
    “Like Dell.”
    “Blood drinkers,” Nathan said. “They drank Kai’s blood?”
    “Go fast,” she said.
    Maybe a hundred would be better.
    *   *   *
    “N O one is being admitted to the scene. Move away now to keep our access clear.”
    Nathan had nothing against cops. He’d been one himself for a time. But the officer stationed at the police cordon near the coffee shop was beginning to annoy him. “If you lack the authority to admit us, you need to contact your superior.”
    “No, sir, I do not. Orders are clear. The three of you need to move away.”
    “Look,” Cullen said, “you’ve seen my ID. If the FBI is here—”
    “I can’t give you that information, but if they were here and if they wanted you to join them, they’d have let me know, wouldn’t they?” There was a definite touch of smirk to his mouth.
    Cullen’s scowl