Magic Burns (Kate Daniels 2)

To warm up or not to warm up? That was the question.

The sounds of rushing water announced a shower starting. She'd decided to stick around. I put a big pot of water on the gas burner. Magic did screwy things to all sorts of ordinary objects, but thankfully, the natural gas still burned. If all else failed, I had a small picnic heater on top of the fridge, together with a jug of kerosene for it.

I had almost finished picking out all of the shrimp, when a very thin, angelic-looking child walked into my kitchen. She had fly-away caramel hair and large brown eyes on a sharp face. It took me a full minute to recognize her and then I collapsed, laughing.

"What?" The little elf-baby looked taken aback.

"You're very clean."

Julie pulled my sweatpants up before they slid off her butt. "I'm hungry. We had a deal."

"Watch the water for me. When it starts boiling, put everything in except the shrimp. Don't eat the shrimp, it's better warm, and don't let the water boil over and drown the gas while I take a shower."

I gathered a heap of clothes and crawled into the shower. There was nothing better than a nice hot shower after a long day. Well, maybe a hot shower followed by hot sex, but my memory in that department was getting a bit fuzzy.

It took a while to get all the dirt out of my hair, and when I popped into the kitchen, the water was boiling. I hooked a piece of corn on the cob with a giant fork. Steaming hot. Good enough. I dropped the shrimp into the pot, let it boil for a quarter of a minute or so, turned the gas off, and dumped the whole thing into the strainer.

The magic fell. On, off, on, off, make up your mind already. "Ever had a low country boil?"

Julie shook her head.

I put the colander in the center of the table and put salt and a stick of butter next to it. "Shrimp, sausage, corn on the cob, and potatoes. Try it. The sausage is turkey and deer meat. I was there when it was made. It doesn't have dog or rat in it."

Julie snagged a piece of sausage, tasted it, and attacked it like starving wolves were snapping at her food. "Thish ish good!" she announced through a mouthful of food.

I barely had a chance to finish the first cob, when a knock echoed through the door. I looked through the peephole. Red.

I opened the door. He glanced at me, eyes narrowed into tiny slits. "Food?"

Kate Daniels, deadly swordswoman and rescuer of hungry orphans. "Come in. Wash your hands."

Julie burst from the kitchen and threw her arms around him. Red stiffened and put one arm around her.

Her face over his shoulder took on a sweet dreamy look. Her mother's disappearance had to have hit her hard, but losing Red would crush her.

"I missed you!" she said softly.

"Yeah," he said, his face flat. "Me, too."

Twenty minutes later I had two full kids and no boil. That meant I'd have to cook something tomorrow. Oi.

"Let's talk." I pinned Red to his chair with my stare. I did deranged quite well, when the occasion required. Strangely, most of my opponents didn't faint and crash to the ground from my stare, but Red was young and used to being bullied. He froze. I didn't like to intimidate adolescent street urchins, but I had a feeling he would bolt at the slightest opportunity if I played it nice. "Tell me what you know about the coven."

"Nothing."

"You took Julie to their gathering place. How did you know where it was?"

"I didn't spill, I swear." Julie paled a little.

Red kept his gaze locked on me. "Same as I found this place. Got some of her mom's hair off a brush at her house. Made a charm, spilled some blood, and let it lead me."

Julie's mom had to be alive at the time he cast his spell. Shamanistic spells were life-tied; to sense a dead body required a much more complicated ritual and the kind of power Red probably didn't have. Not yet anyway.

"You went there by yourself first." It was a guess, but I saw the confirmation in his eyes. "What did you see there, Red?"

His fingers twitched. He turned slightly to the right, hiding the side of his face from me.

"Let me see the right side of your neck."

He swallowed.

"Now."

Red turned. Three long gashes marked his neck from the earlobe all the way down to the collar of his rags. A thin line of yellow pus gathered under the puffy red edges of the wounds.

Not so good. I reached over and touched his head. He jerked back.

"Sit still, knucklehead."

He felt feverish. I reached into the fridge and took out a jar of Rmd3 from the middle shelf. Red's eyes flickered to the brownish paste and back to me.

"What's in there?" Julie asked.

"Rmd3. Better known as Remedy."

"It's the stuff the People carry. I don't need it." Red shifted in his seat.

I looked at his face and saw the decisive thrust of the adolescent jaw. No intelligent life there. I turned to Julie. "It's an herbal treatment for the infection he has brewing on his neck. This is the South-Pacific variety, the best one there is. It can cure the necrosis you get from the undead and takes care of all sorts of nasty infections." I set the jar on the table. Real kava root, and pine-leaf geebung, and a half dozen other things. Expensive, but well worth it.

"I don't need it," he repeated.

"Shamans who topple over in the middle of the street from fever don't live to grow up."

"Take the Remedy, Red." Julie moved the jar to him.

He stared at it as if it were a snake, reached in, and slathered some on his neck. The paste touched the wounds and he winced.

"What clawed you?"

"Creatures," he said. "Odd life. Didn't feel right. Very powerful."

He pronounced "powerful" with respect, almost reverence, tinted with longing. The way an alcoholic ordered his favorite poison after a long dry streak, tasting the name on his tongue.

"Lust for power is a dangerous thing," I said.

He bared his teeth at me. A little feral light danced in his eyes. "You only say that because you have some. People who have power never want anybody else to get it."

Julie tugged on his sleeve. "But you have power. You're a shaman."

He whirled to her. "What good is it? The gangs still knock out my teeth and take my food. So what if I can make them piss blood the day after? Next time, they'll just kill me and be done with it. I want real power. Strength. So nobody fucks with me."

"I can give you what I have," Julie said in a small voice.

"Not yet," he said. "Let it grow bigger."

What was going on between the two of them? The way they looked at each other gave me the creeps.