“That’s impossible,” Ethan said. “She said it wasn’t a dream.”
Wordlessly, Mallory rose, turned to the wall, held out her hand. In the space of a heartbeat, with no obvious effort, a glowing yellow orb appeared in her hand. That was something new. Before, it would have taken closed eyes and concentration for her to achieve. She’d gotten better at harnessing her powers, or at least in making them look effortless.
Mal flicked her fingers, and the orb flew toward the wall like a fastball in a no-hitter. It made contact with an electric sizzle, vibrantly green light shimmering across the wall, across the ward, like dappled sunlight across the bottom of a swimming pool.
When the light faded, she glanced back at us. “The ward is in place.”
That didn’t seem debatable, but Ethan wasn’t satisfied, and his words were biting and bitter. “If the ward is in place, how did he get past it?”
Catcher took a step forward. “You’re going to want to watch your tone, Sullivan.”
“And you’ll want to make sure your magic functions the way it’s supposed to.”
“For fuck’s sake,” Catcher said. “You can see the ward as well as she can, and it’s not been breached. Can you not tell that she’s exhausted?”
I looked at Mallory, for the first time saw the dark shadows beneath her eyes.
“A ward for a structure this large doesn’t operate automatically,” Catcher said, quieter now. “It takes energy to maintain it.”
But Ethan couldn’t see past his fear. “If the wards are in place, how did he get to her? How the fuck did he get to her?”
“Ethan,” I said softly, “he didn’t get past the wards.”
“Maybe it was just a bad dream,” Catcher said. Now Catcher’s protectiveness was making him stupid.
“Do you honestly think I can’t tell the difference between a bad dream and someone in my mind? Someone attacking? Because I have to say, there’s a pretty big difference.”
“All right,” Mallory said, and when Catcher muttered a curse, slugged him in the arm. “I said all right! Everybody take a step back. Something awful has happened here tonight, and you know Merit wouldn’t cry wolf. If she says it happened, then it happened. So instead of griping about it, we figure out what the hell it was. All right?”
When no one answered, she poked Catcher in the arm with a finger. “All right?”
“All right, all right. Damn, woman.” He took a step backward, ran a hand over his shorn scalp.
Mallory nodded, exhaled heavily. “The wards are in place. And yet Balthasar attacked Merit. So if he didn’t attack her physically . . .”
“The attack had to be primarily psychic,” I said. I hadn’t been in a room in France, and Balthasar certainly hadn’t been in here with us. Some sort of psychic connection—strong enough to leave a physical mark—was the only other possibility.
“Vampires can’t—” Catcher began to argue, but Mallory cut him off with a look.
“We’ll assume,” she said, “that nobody has heard about that kind of thing happening before. Regardless, it happened tonight, so let’s discuss how.” She looked at Ethan. “I assume you aren’t aware of him trying this when you two were buddies?”
“We weren’t buddies,” Ethan snapped, but after a glance at me, the anger drained from his face. “And no, I’ve never heard of it happening before, either with him or anyone else.”
“So what’s the range of vampire psychic power?” Mallory said, looking at us.
“Glamour, and the ability to call, to reduce inhibitions,” Ethan said. “Those are relatively common psychic skills. Lindsey’s skill is somewhat more unusual. She’s empathic. She can read emotions. Translate them, as it were.”
Mallory looked at me. “Was he trying to compel you to do something? To kill Ethan or hand over the House keys, or whatever?”
I thought back. “No. He wanted sex. He didn’t get it, obviously, because I started hitting him, and Ethan called my name, and that’s when I woke up. He made himself look like Ethan, tried to use that to get under my skin. He wanted to hurt Ethan through me.”
“Sex. Nightmares. Glamour. He sounds like an incubus,” Mallory pronounced.
An incubus was another night-dwelling supernatural, a sensual creature that sought sex with women while they slept. Or forced them into it. And being a student of the occult even before her magical coming-out, she’d have known.
I wasn’t sure incubi existed, but she had a point. The sensuality. The seductive power. Those were marks of the incubus myth, and I’d seen weirder in my year as a vampire.
I glanced at Ethan. “Is that possible?”