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Julie squinted at it. “No.”
“Dark tourmaline. This building is made with Stone Mountain granite, which has natural tourmaline inclusions. Why?”
Julie wrinkled her forehead. “Tourmaline is frequently used in purifying. It can generate a weak electrical current when rubbed or heated by the sun, and it is a good magic conductor, which makes their wards stronger.”
“What else?”
She looked at me. “Uhh . . .”
“Scrying,” I told her. “It’s used as a scrying stone. It helps them with their research. Come on.”
We walked to the big doors. A ward squeezed me, cutting off my breath for a moment, and then the pressure vanished. We were through.
I nodded at the guard at the fortified reception desk. “Kate Daniels. I am here to see Luther.”
“Go in,” the woman told me. “Second floor, big door on the right.”
We went up the stone stairs. People walked past us, talking in quiet voices, sometimes relaxed, sometimes intense. We made it to the second floor and turned right. A deserted hallway stretched in front of us, lit by the blue glow of feylanterns.
“Kate,” Julie asked, her voice small.
“Mm-hm?”
“You do remember me, don’t you? You don’t have amnesia?”
Oh, Julie. I turned on my foot and hugged her. She leaned against me, limp.
“Do you remember when I took you to Pelican Point? You ate shrimp and cried.”
She sniffled.
“And when we bought the owl?” I said. “The woman wanted thirty bucks for it, and then, when we got home, I had to fight with you to wash it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Even if I had amnesia, I would still remember that I love you.”
She hugged me once, squeezing me tight, and let go. We walked down the hall as if nothing had happened, right up to the big metal door blocking our way. I knocked and swung it open.
Luther stood by the laboratory table, holding a clear plastic container filled with dried herbs. He wore pale scrubs that had been bleached too many times and his face was sour. On the table, splayed out and butterflied like a chicken for the grilling, sprawled the corpse of a scaled lizardlike beast. Luther bent over it and sprinkled the herbs onto the exposed tissue. Ugh.
“Really, Luther, if I knew you were that hungry, I would’ve picked up some takeout.”
At the sound of my voice, he turned. “You!”
“Me.”
“What is this?” He looked at Julie. “Mini-you?”
“Julie—Luther. Be careful with him, he’s sharp. Luther—Julie. She’s my adopted daughter.”
“Showing her the ropes?” Luther squinted at Julie. “What is that magic you’ve got there? A sensate? You’ve been sitting on a sensate all this time and you didn’t share? Not cool, Daniels. Not cool at all.”
“I’ll share if you do.”
Luther spread his arms. “All things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine.”
“John seventeen, the Prayer for Disciples,” Julie said. “But not the King James version.”
That’s right. The King James version would’ve had “thines” in it.
“New American Standard,” Luther said. “I’m a patriot and proud of it.”
“Is that the lizard that came out of the giant?” I asked before they decided to dazzle each other with their brilliance.
“It is, and I had to fight the military and the GBI for it. I just sprinkled mugwort on it.”
Nice. Whatever faults Luther had, stupid wasn’t one of them. I walked over and looked at the carcass.
“Why mugwort?” Julie asked. “I thought it was for warding off evil?”
“Because it is associated with Goddess Nu Wa,” Luther said.
“There is a reason why Nu Wa was depicted in ancient Chinese art as having the head of a human and the body of a serpent,” I told her.
Luther checked the clock “Three, two . . . one.”
The exposed muscle turned bright emerald green.
“A draconoid,” I said. Out of the frying pan and into the fire.
Luther stared at the ceiling and made a frustrated growl.
“Why is that bad?” Julie asked.
“There have been four documented sightings of a real dragon,” Luther said. “They are the UFOs of our age. We don’t know a lot about them . . . no, scratch that, we have a wealth of myths so we know a lot about what they might be, but we have almost no empirical evidence to justify any of the bullshit. We do know that they are beings of immense magic power. Three of the sightings have been during a flare.”
