Heart hurting, I asked, “Can we see the handshakes again, at four-times speed? Maybe a few more times before we follow her away?”
The screen blinked as the recording reset. The bob and handshakes repeated, jerky, fast, shaky. It played again and then again.
“Right there,” I said. “Just as she turns from Eddie the Great. That flash at her middle.”
“I see it,” EJ said.
“Has Ivyanna had any health issues in the last year?” I asked,knowingthe answer was central to…everything.
EJ tapped on his unicom. On the top right of the screen, a health report appeared. It was Ivyanna’s, from last year, part of her blood servant contract at the time.
I went chilled and sat tall, my spine straight as a sword. “Ivyanna was pregnant. Lost the baby. For some reason she didn’t get a vamp to heal her. While she was in the hospital something happened. What is that?” I pointed. “That coded line. Line three.”
“Hang on,” Pretty Thang said. “I’m in the system. Adding hospital codes intoOjos.
“That,” he said, a few seconds later, “is the diagnosis code for treatment of a burn.”
The chill flooded through me. Theknowing. “What kind of burn?”
EJ swiped through the reports.
One caught Pretty Thang’s attention. “That one,” the medic said.
EJ enlarged the code on the screen.
“She suffered an in-hospital accident,” Pretty Thang said, “postsurgically, following her admittance for abnormal bleeding.”
“Convenient timing,” EJ said, of the burn wound.
“Is there a pic of the burn?” I asked.
“Hang on,” Peg said. “I’m hitting HIPAA privacy walls. Raccoon, Pretty Thang, help me here.”
A full minute passed. The room was silent. Comms silent. My precog hovered just out of reach. Frustration and unease blended together inside me, creating a new emotion, one I had no name for.
A picture of a small wound appeared on the screen. Raccoon enlarged it and spun the pic. A fresh burn was on Ivyanna’s upper hip at what would have been her bikini line, on the front.
The burn looked like—
WY.
Ivyanna had been branded. Like Walter.
“Why?” EJ breathed. “She’s human. Why brand a human? Ivyanna has no magic.”
I said, “What if…” I reached for the gift and it flitted near then away, too fast to catch.
Pretty Thang said, “The magic is in the brandandthe branding iron. Like, thegeasin the burns requires that particular ironandthat specific working.”
I turned startled eyes to the guard. The silence in the room went deep, profound, unbroken even by human breath.
Pretty Thang looked around, his eyes wide. “What,” he demanded. “What’d I say?”
Raccoon said, “I’m thinking you just delivered the missing piece of this whole damn puzzle. Why couldn’t you say that sooner?”
Pretty Thang’s face creased. “I thought it was obvious.”
“Son of a witch,” EJ muttered. “Brand and branding iron. Both.”
