Page 123 of Change

I stumbled to my feet and pointed at him. “Why didn’t you tell me about this before!”

He slowly raised his eyebrow before responding, enunciating each word. “Idid. You just never listened.”

“What was it? That was different from what I remember.” Miles slowly straightened as he regained his composure. He was watching me with an impassive expression, and I knew that while he might hold back for now, the questions would be coming later.

There was no use in hiding anymore.

I shivered. The second revelation of the day clawed at me. There was no mistaking that energy signature. “He was there…” I was barely able to whisper the words. I was still numb.

My own grandfather did this.

“Joe?” Damen wasn’t even pretending to be sensitive. “I told you that he was. Anyway, what’s about Bailey—”

“Bailey isn’t real!” I snapped, the numbness and horror fell away and was replaced by a deep, loathing anger.

But not toward Damen… this time.

“It was a puppet,” I told him. “A highly advanced one. They trickedyouinto activating it. That’s why—”

“Wait,wait.” Damen got to his feet, and in a rare display of awareness, he grabbed my arm, not-so-gently shoving me into a seat and tossing a red handkerchief into my palm. “Use that for your hand; I don’t want you bleeding all over the place. And you”—he looked at Miles, who was still looking rather green—“for God’s sake, eat something,” he ordered, pushing a rose-plated dish across the side table that separated the two of their seats.

Miles obeyed and ate the fist-sized chocolate chip cookie in two bites. He wiped the crumbs off his face with the back of his hand before snatching up another, but already, his skin was returning to its normal, pale complexion.

“Now,” Damen began graciously, stepping to the side and gesturing toward the teapot. “Would you like to—”

“Will you shut up?” Why the hell was Damen only considerate at the most random, inopportune moments? This was no time to worry about me. “I’m fine.”

“Oh, okay.” He stepped back and tugged at the bottom of his shirt, straightening his appearance. “Good. I just didn’t want you to throw up on my rug.”

I eyed the worn out, but perfectly suited to Damen’s inclination for antiquities, carpeting. “There’s blood on there.”

There were two teaspoon sized drops from where my wound had bled too much. I could have sworn I saw Damen’s eye twitch.

“No matter,” he said finally. “It gives it extra character, and nothing smells quite as bad as vomit.” He returned to his seat and crossed his ankle over his knee. “So, explain.”

“It was a puppet.” I sighed, squeezing my fist, which was almost assuredly causing the cut to bleed even more. “We can use enchantments over humanoid figures to create replicas of a living person. Obviously, these figures are not alive too—and we can modify bits and pieces that we’d like. But unless an autopsy is performed, no one would ever know.”

“Butwhy?” Miles asked as he ate the last remaining cookie. His color was back to normal now. “What is the point? When would you use something like that? It felt similar to—”

I cut him off, fighting, but failing, to keep the annoyance from my voice. “We have our reasons. But this is far worse. However, there are times in our practice when it’s…” I thought back: espionage and blackmail were the most common reasons. “Necessary.”

Miles sat forward, authority ringing from his form as he responded. “What I felt in that room shouldneverbe necessary.”

“It’s not… anymore.” I could barely hold back my chill. “Allaspects of that magic were banned ages ago, as you know. I don’t knowhow…”

“What is it doing?” Damen butted in, watching the two of us. Normally the onmyoji dominated conversation, but like today, sometimes he was still. For example, when he was still forming an opinion on something, or a topic was being discussed that he knew was out of his expertise.

“Puppets carry the essence of a person within them, making them an almost perfect replica. They are often used as a decoy,” I explained. “Think about it,” I hurried on before either Damen or Miles could interrupt, because I could tell from their lax, but readying, expressions that the questions were coming. “We necromancers deal withthe dead, and need, preferably, a physical body in order to do our work. Can you not think of a single instance when we’d not want to alarm the public of their missing deceased? When we have questionsaftera case is closed. What do you think we’d do in such a situation?”

“Grave robbing?” Miles’s brows drew together, and his lips pressed in a stern line. “You switch out bodies? That I can overlook—sometimes. But you wouldn’t touch a body after it’s been buried, right? After the last rites had been performed?”

This was what I’d been expecting from the beginning. Witches, after all, respected ritual above all else. “I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure he’s safe, and to get you what you need,” I answered, glancing at Damen.

No one needed clarification on whohewas. Damen might have had my loyalty by power and association, but there was only one other person in the world for whom I’d be willing to break the rules of decency.

“Julian.” Damen’s voice was deeper now, threaded heavily with displeasure. “No one asked you to—”

“Stop being idealistic,” I said, glaring at the teapot. It still sat untouched over the ceramic warmer, and the flame flickered and leaned toward the onmyoji. “It’s better, on some level, than dealing with the screams of the living to get my answers.”