by Eileen Wilks
“He doesn’t want to draw attention to his unique relationship with the clans. Had today’s guards been Nokolai or Leidolf, we could say I sent them out of concern for a friend. It’s more difficult to explain why a Welsh clan would send bodyguards to protect a man they’ve never met and shouldn’t even know exists. We can’t explain it, not without speaking of the Lady’s instructions to us. And we do not want to make that public.”
“I suppose not.” Her frown deepened. “Besides, lupi don’t make the best witnesses. No offense, but everyone assumes a lupus will say whatever his Rho wants him to say, so all the prosecution would have to do is establish some reason their Rho might have told them to alibi Ruben. Given that most lupi could be expected to hate Bixton, that shouldn’t be hard.”
“I gather Ruben thought much the same thing. How much danger is he in?” Rule asked quietly.
“The only reason he hasn’t been arrested yet is that Drummond’s annoying, but he’s not an idiot. Hard to believe Ruben could be stupid enough to give his name to the maid, then walk in and kill Bixton.” Her jaw tightened. “She’s behind this. Her first attempt failed, so she’s coming after Ruben a different way. I have to call Cullen. I’ve got questions I need answered.”
“I thought Drummond hadn’t approved that.”
“And I thought you might lean on Cullen for some pro bono work.”
“Actually, I already spoke with him. He’ll be here . . .” The sudden wincing around her eyes, the draining of blood from her face, had him on his feet. “Lily.”
“It’s that damn headache again.”
“That’s twice today,” he said grimly.
“Yeah. This one doesn’t seem to be going away as fast as the other two.” Her voice was thin. She touched the air near the back of her head. “Is this what a migraine feels like? I swear I’m never going to . . .” Her eyes closed.
“That’s it. You’re getting checked out by—” He leaped and caught her as she toppled out of the chair.
He went to the floor with her spread across his lap, his heart pounding in fear. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. Her pulse was rapid when he pressed his fingers to her throat. She was so damn pale. “You’ve got five seconds to wake up, then I call the ambulance. One—”
“Didn’t faint,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.
His own eyes closed briefly in relief. “You gave a damn fine impression of it.”
“I’m okay. Headache’s gone.” He could see the effort it took to force her eyes open. “When the pain shut off, I went dizzy. Now . . . just tired. No ambulance.”
“You’ve got to be checked out.”
“No doctors. They’d look at my arm, figure out something was going on with it. Can’t tell ‘em what, so better not provoke them.”
He wasn’t sure a regular doctor would be much help, or he’d bundle her in the car over her objections and take her to the ER right now. Fortunately, there was an alternative. “The Leidolf Rhej will be here tomorrow.”
She blinked. “Oh. Mika told you.”
“Mika? What does he . . .” He scowled. “If you suffered a reaction at your mindspeech lesson and didn’t tell me—”
“No, no.” Her hand flopped vaguely in denial. “He wants to watch a healer work. He wanted you to bring him one.” Her eyes closed. “Rhejes don’t jump when their Rho says hop.”
“She’ll come. For this, she’ll come.”
“’Kay. I’m so damn tired. Did you make coffee?”
He gathered her in his arms and stood. “I’ll put some on. You might as well rest while it’s brewing.”
She was asleep before he was halfway up the stairs.
TWELVE
LILY woke to the sound of voices downstairs. She knew before opening her eyes Rule wasn’t beside her, so no surprise that one of those voices was his. The other was familiar, but unexpected.
She glanced at the clock—6:22. A normal time to wake up, but those glowing numbers said she’d slept for nearly ten hours. She never slept that long. But then, she didn’t usually pass out from exhaustion.
Her head didn’t hurt. She felt fine . . . in a “gibbering in fear” sort of way.
What was wrong with her?
She wasn’t going to figure that out by pulling the covers over her head, even if that sounded good at the moment. Might as well get her day started.
Fifteen minutes later she headed downstairs with her hair still wet from the shower. Rule met her on the staircase and handed her a mug of coffee without speaking . . . at least, not out loud. His eyes said plenty.
She sipped. Rule made incredible coffee. “I feel fine. I don’t know what’s wrong. Something is, but until we have more facts, I don’t see any point in thinking about it.”
His mouth crooked up in spite of the worry in his eyes. “Qualified denial?”
“It isn’t denial if I admit something’s wrong.”
“I spoke with the Leidolf Rhej. She’ll be here by noon.”
The muscles across her shoulders loosened in relief. “Good. It’s probably some sort of weird migraine.”
“You won’t use the investigation as an excuse to delay seeing the Rhej.”
“You need to stop pulling mantle on me. It doesn’t work, and it annoys me. But yes, I’ll make time for her. I’ll come home for lunch. I’m not an idiot.” She started down the stairs again. “Cullen’s here.”
“I asked him to come yesterday.”
“You said something about that just before I got the headache we aren’t talking about. Is Cullen, uh . . . is he part of Ruben’s group?”
“I’ve briefed him on what I know about Bixton’s death.”
In other words, she wasn’t part of their secret club, so he couldn’t tell her who was. Lily kept moving. “I smell sausage.”
“There should be some left. I threatened Cullen’s life if he ate all of it.”
The only lupus sorcerer in the history of the planet sat at their kitchen table, finishing up a plate of French toast. He was a bit shorter than Rule, his hair a bit lighter brown—more spice than mink—and his face stopped people in their tracks. The spectacular face went well with a supernally graceful body.
This morning that face was unshaven, the expression surly, and the body dressed in disreputable jeans. He wore a small diamond in one ear, a larger one on a chain around his neck, and his T-shirt bore a cartoon of what seemed to be a Sasquatch in a ninja costume.
Sometimes Lily did not get Cullen’s sense of humor. “A ninja Sasquatch?”
“Cool, isn’t it?”
“Sit,” Rule said. “I’ll fix you some French toast.”
Lily wasn’t going to argue with French toast. She sat. “What time did you get in?” she asked Cullen.
“Plane landed at one. Traffic sucked. Got here about two. Napped for a couple hours.” He dragged the last bite of battered bread through a puddle of maple syrup. “You going to eat your sausage?”
“Yes. How—”
“Don’t know yet, but you’ve got a minimum of five perps.”
“So I assumed. What I was about to ask is, how are Cynna and the baby?”
Surly vanished, eclipsed by what Lily could only call a glow. Cullen’s phone was on the table. He shoved it at her, tapped the screen a couple times, and said, “Beautiful. See? They’re both ungodly beautiful. She’s smiling in some of these pics. I don’t care what they say—that’s a real smile.”
“She” meant Ryder, Lily assumed, the six-pound, seven-ounce explosion that had rocked the clans’ world. Cullen and Cynna had a daughter. And she was lupus.
That was impossible. There had never been a female lupus and there never would be. Lupi had daughters sometimes, sure, but only their sons could Change. Only their sons were lupi. Yet according to Cullen, who could see the magical energy around his daughter, little Ryder would someday turn wolf. According to the Rhejes, Cullen was right.
A lot of lupi were dealing with this knockout punch to their worldview in the ti
me-honored way: selective denial. Yes, the Lady said that the arrival of a female lupus meant that war had resumed with their ancient enemy. War was fine. They understood war. They did not understand the concept of a female lupus, so they refused to talk about it.
Lily had started scrolling through a few hundred lovely if incredibly repetitious photos of the mother and baby stored on Cullen’s phone when Rule set a plate of French toast in front of her. As she ate, Cullen talked about cloth diapers, tiny fingernails, Cynna’s breasts—she was breast-feeding, as about a hundred of the photos testified—infant massage, and gas.
It was surprisingly comforting. Not interesting, no. She couldn’t say she found a lecture on various ways to burp a baby interesting. But comforting. By the time Rule joined them with his own plate, Lily had almost finished thumbing through the photos and Cullen was discussing the potential problems of seeing a daughter through First Change.
“. . . one of the biggies, of course, being contraceptives.” He brooded on that a moment. “We have to assume the pill won’t work. As soon as she goes through the Change, her body will reject any drugs in her system. So we’ll have to rely on mechanical methods, but fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds aren’t noted for their skill at planning ahead. Telling the boys I’ll kill them if they forget to use a condom won’t work.”
Lily didn’t quite choke on the food in her mouth, but it was a near thing. She swallowed. “You don’t think abstinence is a possibility?”
Cullen snorted. “Not with lupi boys—and not, I’m guessing, with a lupus girl. Normally we control availability. New wolves simply aren’t around potential sex partners at terra tradis. But the only way to control availability with Ryder would be to separate her from the other new wolves. I won’t do that to her.”
Puberty arrived a bit later for most lupi than for humans, typically around age fourteen. When it did, it triggered First Change. At that point the boy—or, as the lupi usually said, the new wolf—was sequestered with other adolescents at the terra tradis, a private area where new wolves could be closely supervised and trained. It took a young lupus several years to learn to control the Change and his wolf. “I guess new wolves want to be around their age-mates.”
“It’s more need than want,” Rule said. “The two years following First Change are critical to integrating our dual natures. Lupi who are deprived of age-mates in that period can be forever at war with themselves.”
Cullen didn’t look happy. “So limiting availability is off the table. Chemical and mechanical means won’t work. I’m going to have to find a magical method.”
“Is there such a thing?” Lily asked, startled. “A magical contraceptive?”
“By the time my daughter turns thirteen, there will be.”
“I guess that’ll be complicated, since, uh . . . I mean . . .” This was not an easy subject. “It’ll have to be a flexible method, won’t it? There aren’t condoms for wolves. And they couldn’t put them on if there were.”
“Oh, you’re talking about when she’s wolf.” Cullen said. “That shouldn’t be as much of a problem. We’ll have to wait and see to be sure, but it’s unlikely she’ll be in perpetual heat the way human females are.”
Lily opened her mouth. Closed it.
“Biologically speaking,” Rule said apologetically, “being in heat means being fertile. Human females don’t have heat cycles because they remain potentially fertile. Female wolves generally go into heat only once a year, in the winter.”
Cullen nodded. “We may have to segregate Ryder when her wolf’s in heat, but the jury’s still out on that. We can only speculate based on the behavior of wild wolves, but abstinence might work for her wolf form. Most female wolves refuse to mate with non-dominants, and the dominants Ryder will be around will be adults and able to control themselves.”
“Out of charity for Mason,” Rule said dryly, referring to the Nokolai elder who had charge of the youngsters at terra tradis , “segregating her during her cycle might be best.”
Cullen chuckled. “Maybe so.”
Lily sighed. “I’m really, deeply uncomfortable talking about fourteen-year-old kids having sex.”
Two uncomprehending male faces turned toward her.
“It doesn’t feel icky to you? Never mind.” Clearly it didn’t. Lupi were deeply protective of their children. Lily knew that. No pedophile who preyed on—or tried to prey on—a clan child had to worry about arrest. He’d be way too dead to worry about anything. And kids having sex with kids was not the same thing at all, and there’d been a time when fourteen-year-olds married, but . . . not now, she told herself firmly. “Let’s talk about something simpler, like illusion spells.”
“They don’t exist,” Cullen said promptly. “Not in any meaningful way. Not in our realm.”
“And yet someone who looked like Ruben killed Senator Bixton. Wait, wait,” she said, shoving her chair back. “I need my pad.” Taking notes was how she thought.
Rule put his fork down, reached out one long arm to the nearby counter, and retrieved the little spiral she knew damn well she’d left in her jacket pocket.
She accepted it from him. “When you stay three jumps ahead of me, I start feeling inadequate.”
“You’re welcome.” He handed her a pen, too.
She flipped to the page where she’d jotted down the questions she wanted to be sure she asked Cullen. “Okay. Illusion spells don’t exist in our realm, but the Great Enemy isn’t from our realm, isn’t human, and doesn’t have a lot of limits on what she can do. One of the limits she does face is contacting someone here directly. She’d need a telepath on this end to do that, right?”
“For the kind of clear communication it takes to teach someone a spell, yes,” Cullen said. “At least she did three thousand years ago. If she’s learned any new tricks since then, she didn’t use them when she was getting the Azá to open that gate for her. Friar probably dreams about her.” He shoved his chair back and headed for the coffeepot. “I mean that both ways. He’s smitten, plus she probably contacts him in dreams.”
“But it would be somewhere between unlikely and impossible for her to teach him an illusion spell in a dream, right?”
“In my opinion, yes. But I’m not an Old One.” Cullen refilled his mug and leaned against the counter to sip from it. “Still, what little I know about illusion spells suggests that they’re mage-level, if not adept. Friar’s got a gazillion oomphs of power now, but even if she managed to convey the details of such a spell in a dream, he lacks the training and experience to execute it.”
“You’re sure.”
“Spellwork isn’t just saying some fancy words while you stir together eyes of newt and toes of frog. You have to know what you’re doing in blood, body, and brain, and the only way to get that kind of knowledge is through practice and lots of it. It’s like the difference between watching football and playing it. Armchair quarterbacks might be able to analyze the hell out of a play, but they couldn’t execute it.”
“The Great Bitch is an Old One. Couldn’t she just inject that kind of knowledge into Friar when she gave him his Gift?”
“Not according to my sources—whose names wouldn’t mean much to you, so you’ll have to take my word for it.” He sipped again. “But that’s why she gave Friar a Gift, not a lot of fancy spells. He won’t be able to use any but very basic spells for a good, long time.”
“Bring that pot over here, would you? I wonder why mindspeech doesn’t work across realms.” She made a note to ask Mika about that.
“You’re sure that it doesn’t?” Rule asked.
“Based on the fact that she hasn’t been doing it all along, yeah, that seems a good bet.” She frowned at her notebook. “If illusion is out, what does that leave us?”
Cullen carried the pot back to the table with him. “I didn’t say illusion was out. I said an illusion spell was extremely unlikely. There’s still the possibility of an illusion Gift.” He set the pot by her elbow and sat down. “That Gift has never a
ppeared in a human, but elven lords often develop it. I suspect illusion is the mature form of their innate ability to cast a glamour.”
Lily drummed her fingers. She truly and deeply did not want to be dealing with another sidhe lord. The one they’d encountered last month had been more than enough. Still, she noted the possibility . . . and caught a glimpse of her watch. “Shit. I’m going to have to rush through the rest of the questions, or leave some for later. You’ll be here later?”
“I’ll be around.” For some reason, that amused him. “You have a time clock to punch?”
“Drummond wants me at Headquarters at eight. I’m supposed to vet every agent on the team—make sure none of them are tainted by death magic. Which takes me to my next question. How long would the taint linger in someone who took part in a death magic ritual?”
“There’s an easy one to answer. I don’t know.”
“If you could give me some idea—”
“Anything I tell you is likely to be wrong. Your Gift is going to find traces that non-sensitives can’t, but I don’t know how long those traces linger—too damn little to go on and too many variables. Some people are more”—he gestured vaguely—“more porous than others. They’d soak up more. Plus it would depend on how many participants were at the ritual, whether the sacrifice was animal or human, and how many were sacrificed.”
“How many? You mean there could be more than one victim at a single ritual?”
“Sure. Theoretically, the only limit comes from how much power the chief celebrant can absorb or channel. The old Aztecs managed to do at least a thousand people a day when they consecrated their temple.”
“A thousand a day.”
“Some experts put it much higher. I suspect they wasted most of the power, but you’ve got to give them points for enthusiasm.”
“No,” she said, “I don’t. You think it could have been animal sacrifice?”
“Could be. The Azá used animal sacrifice.”
“That’s not what they had in mind when they grabbed me.”
“Human sacrifice is needed for a major working, sure, if you’re powering that working through death magic. But the real question is why they used death magic at all.”