Dark Debt

“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?”

“Incubi do not exist,” Ethan said flatly. He sat on a corner of the console table. “But vampire strengths—psych, strat, phys—can have their own flavor. Like Lindsey’s being empathic.”

Ethan glanced over, arranged three of the objects on the console table—a rune stone, a small stone figure of a bear, and the autographed baseball he’d once given me, now home among the knickknacks—in a straight line, the objects spaced equally apart.

“Most vampires have moderate strength.” He pushed the rune above the others and out of alignment. “Occasionally, a vampire will be moderately strong in two categories, extra strong in one.” Now he pushed the bear together with the rune. “And sometimes the vampire will have two strong attributes—strength and psych—and sometimes the flavor of those attributes runs toward the sexual.”

“And that’s really the origin of the incubus idea,” Catcher said.

“Precisely,” Ethan said with a nod. “Balthasar enjoys all things carnal, sexual or otherwise. His ability to glamour has always been strong, as we saw in my office, but I wouldn’t have considered him a Very Strong Psych.”

“Why not?” I asked.

Ethan frowned, as if trying to explain his hunch. “I suppose I’ve always considered him more of a physical actor, not a metaphysical one. He prefers seducing a woman with his charms—and the ego boost that comes from success.”

“Maybe it wasn’t just the force of his personality,” Mallory said. “Maybe there was some magic or glamour in there, too.”

“Or maybe I just never wanted to see it,” Ethan said, then glanced at me. “I was still learning to be a vampire at his hand. Especially during the earlier years, vampires didn’t think overmuch about strength or categorization.”

I nodded. “So, if he’s got this skill, or developed it while he recuperated, what do we do to keep him out?” I looked at Mallory. “Can you adjust the wards somehow?”

They looked at each other, brows furrowed as if they were engaged in silent deliberation.

“I don’t know why that wouldn’t be possible,” Catcher said. “If we can create a physical barrier, why not a psychic one?”

Mallory twirled a lock of blue hair. “Yeah, I’ll need to think about it, poke around the library for a bit, if that’s all right?”

“Fine by me,” Ethan said. “Do you think you could prepare something tonight? By dawn?”

“I won’t know until I know,” Mallory said. “But I’ll get started and keep you updated.”

Ethan nodded. “We have to go to Navarre to discuss the Circle.”

“That’ll be a good time,” Catcher said.

“If by good time, you mean something akin to a fang root canal, then yes, it will be.”

I looked at Ethan. “That’s not a thing—fang root canals.”

He smiled. “It’s not, no. But it makes a very good metaphor. And it made you smile.”

“Aw,” Mallory said. “That’s so cute. Work on boosting each other’s moods, because you probably shouldn’t kill Morgan in frustration. Navarre has enough problems at the moment without adding vampiricide.”