Page 29 of Incarnate

"I think you have the wrong person in mind,” I say.

"Oh, I don't think I do." She reaches across the counter and takes my chin between her thumb and forefinger, tilting my face toward the candlelight as a scone hits the floor.

Her hand is very warm.

She examines me, her eyes moving across my features with an intimacy that curls my stomach.

Then her eyes flash a brilliant ruby red.

My blood turns to frost.

"Margaret?”

The smile sharpens into something I recognize. That condescending patience. "There she is. I'll give the old bat credit—she's hiding your aura well—but you can't disguise a soul, Penelope. Not one I’ve already read the signature of. Whatever blocks the Dominus from you, doesn’t from me.”

"Let go of me."

"I'm not going to hurt you," Margaret says, her voice deepening, cracking into something richer. "I couldn't if I wanted to. Do you have any idea what you are?"

"I'm a baker."

"You are the mate of the Dominus." Her breathing quickens, the red eyes luminous with the desperate reverence of a subject who has found her god's most precious thing. "Come with me, little mate."

"No."

"This explains so much," Margaret breathes, her hands reaching toward the air around me, trembling, grasping at nothing. "The power in the processing room. The broken floor. The way the Primus couldn't read your soul. If only I could touch you… If he knew I found you, the reward⁠—"

Something connects with the back of Margaret's skull with a sound like a wet branch snapping, her whole body going stiff. When Judica pulls it back, I see it's studded with nails like a mace.

Margaret staggers, her body convulsing before the brown hair turns a true red, then it shifts to something between, the features swimming like a reflection in disturbed water. She manages to move in her dazed state, and Judica is already behind her with a palm pressed flat to Margaret's forehead.

Runes flare white. Margaret's mouth opens in a silent scream, her body arching backward, red eyes rolling to white. Smoke curls from where Judica's fingers meet skin.

"Judica —" I start.

"Quiet."

She mutters something in another language, and Margaret crumples. The shapeshifter flattens against the floor in a heap of limbs already losing solidity, the body deflating like something punctured, red hair dimming to gray, then to nothing.

I stand behind the counter with both hands flat on the wood, breathing hard. “What the fuck.”

"She knew it was you."

"Yeah, I gathered that from the speech about my soul."

"Did she touch you?"

"My chin."

Judica grabs my face and turns it, examining where Margaret's fingers had been. "If an Omagi imprints on you through touch, they can track the residue. To a skilled one, it's like following a candle in the dark. They can track down a novus easily that way.” She releases me and produces a jar of crushed charcoal mixed with oil. "Wash your face with this. Everywhere she touched. Then wash it again."

I take the jar, hands shaking. "Is she dead? Actually dead?"

"She'll wake up in Nepo in a few weeks. The first thing she'll do is report to the nearest Seraph station." Judica sweeps the remains toward the back door with a broom that materialized from somewhere, like Margaret’s body is just a bunch of ashes that accidentally spilled onto the floor. "Which gives us approximately two weeks before the information reaches Kallúm."

My heart flips with excitement, and yet balanced with the dread of things happening against my own schedule.

"So she'll just come back?"