A Stroke Of Midnight   ::   Гамильтон Лорел

But it was Biddy who stumbled. Nicca caught her before she hit the snow. I heard her apologize, “I don’t know what’s wrong. I’m so cold.”

“Stop, all of you, stop,” I said. Everyone obeyed, some of them looking out at the snow, fingers near weapons.

It was Galen who asked, “What’s wrong, Merry?”

“Are Biddy and I the only ones here with human blood?”

“I think so.”

“I tried to conjure the feel of summer sun, and I couldn’t remember what it was like.”

Doyle had worked his way back to me. “What is wrong?”

“Check Biddy and me for a spell, a spell that attacks only human blood.”

He pulled off one of his black gloves and put his hand just above my face, not touching skin, but searching my aura, my shielding, my magic.

He growled low and soft, but the sound raised the hair on the back of my neck. “I take it you found something.”

He nodded. Then he turned to Biddy, who was half fainting in Nicca’s arms. “I am sorry, Doyle. I am truly better than this.”

“It is a spell,” he told her, and lifted off her helmet to lay his hand above her face. He handed the helmet to Nicca and turned to me, unable to hide the spark of angry color in his eyes. He was fighting down his power, raised by anger. Anger at himself most likely for letting yet another spell slip under his nose. We had some truly subtle spells being worked on us. One of us would have noticed something big, but such small spells were harder to guard against.

“It is tied to mortal blood. It simply sucks at your energy, and fills you with cold.”

“Why is Biddy more affected than Merry?” Nicca asked. He was covered completely in a thick cloak, except for his wings. They were held tight together as if they would stay warmer that way, and maybe they did. He was warm-blooded; moth wings did not change that.

I answered him. “She’s half-human, I’m less than a fourth human. If it is seeking human blood, she’s got more than I have.”

“Are the human police affected?” Hawthorne asked.

Doyle put his hand back over me, and this time I felt a warm pulse of magic shiver over my shields. “It is like a contagion. It was put on either Biddy or the princess, then jumped from one to the other. If we do not remove it, it will spread to the police.”

I looked up at him, speaking with the warmth of his magic against my skin, like breath. “What would it do to full-blooded humans?”

“It made a warrior of the sidhe stumble in the snow.