by Eileen Wilks
“It’s pretty much what it sounds like—magic that’s sourced in part or whole on blood. Blood is highly magically active. Doesn’t matter if it’s from a null or a big, bad werewolf—it’s got juice.”
“I don’t get that. Lupus blood carries some of their magic. Blood from a Gifted person might, too, I guess. But blood from a normal human? How is that magic?”
“Magic’s everywhere. Or potential magic, maybe. Thing is, mostly it’s sort of transmuted into being instead of acting. That’s what spells are for. They take a bit of that being and make it acting.”
“I know you think that makes sense.”
Cynna ran a hand over her hair, making the spikes stand up straight. “Cullen’s better at explaining than I am. Say you use a rose in a spell—and it’s a good spell, and you know what you’re doing, because if it’s a poorly crafted spell, nothing happens. But this is a workable spell cast by someone with a bit of magic to feed into it. Some bit of that rose stops being rose and acts as rose. It’s like the difference between a noun and a verb.”
“And blood has lots of potential magic?”
“You could put it that way.” Cynna yawned hugely. “Sorry. One reason blood spells have a bad rep is that a person’s blood can be used to power a spell against them. A hex or curse, in other words. That’s what someone’s done to Cullen, though it isn’t like any hex or curse I’ve ever heard of.”
“He said the spell was powered from his blood. That’s what any blood curse does, isn’t it?”
“Not exactly. The way he said it . . . I’m guessing, but it sounded like it’s drawing power from him now. Not like it was initially powered by blood someone stole from him somehow, but like it’s powered from his blood while it’s in him. That’s real tricky. I never heard of a spell that could do that.” She shook her head, sighed. “He’s going to want to figure it out, and not just the way a sane person would, so he can get rid of it. No, he’ll want to understand it.”
She sounded gloomy, but not for the reason Lily’s anxiety spiked. A spell like Cynna described would be hard to defeat. It wouldn’t run out of power as long as Cullen was alive. “Nettie said the spell made Cullen’s body fight against his magic.”
“That fits. Healing—ordinary healing—is delivered through the blood. The spell either interferes with that or makes the blood actively toxic. Cullen’s magic keeps fixing things, but it can’t get rid of the spell, and the spell keeps messing up his blood again.”
Lily’s phone sounded. It was the chime that meant the call had been forwarded from her official number, so she answered it. “Yu here.”
“Hey, babe.”
The gravelly voice was immediately familiar. Funny. She’d thought she didn’t remember Cody’s voice that clearly. Lily felt a smile tug at her mouth. “I never did break you of that habit. What’s up?”
“Not a damned thing.” He sounded tired. “We’re winding up here. Thought I’d let you know. Oh, and the big boss wolf said to tell you one of his people picked up a scent, but it petered out. He wants to know how the vic’s doing. I’d like to know, too.”
“He’s alive. He’s also still reacting to a nasty spell that damn near killed him, which makes this case mine.”
Cody was silent for a long moment. “Guess I can’t argue with that. Never thought I’d see you on the fed side of the fence, though.”
“It feels weird sometimes.” All at once she had a dozen questions to ask him. Questions that had nothing to do with the case. Nothing to do with the present at all. With an effort she shoved them away and asked the ones that mattered.
Still no sign of the weapon. No physical evidence at all, basically. They were talking about what role the sheriff’s department would have in the investigation when someone knocked on the door. “Got to go,” she said quickly, drawing her weapon and sliding her phone back in her pocket.
Rule opened the door. It was Jason. At her nod, he wheeled in a folded-up rollaway bed with one hand. Under his other arm he carried a large bundle of blankets.
The blankets spoke. “Can’t goddamn breathe in here.”
“Hang on a sec.” Jason set the bundle down, unwrapped the top blanket, and revealed four and a half feet of scowling gnome.
Max had beady little eyes sunk beneath hairy, salt-and-pepper eyebrows. His nose dripped toward his chin like a blob of melted wax. His mouth lacked much in the way of lips, and his skin was the color of mushrooms. His shoulders were wide, his neck barely there, and his suit could have come from the 1920s. The black fedora covering his bald head went with the suit. The neon pink socks, not so much.
He straightened his suit jacket, muttering under his breath about idiots and assholes.
“Love the socks,” Lily said.
He regarded his feet with satisfaction. “Gan gave ’em to me. Stupid female has the worst taste in the thirteen realms, but she sure can fuck. Say, you want to—”
“No,” Lily said firmly.
“Guess not, you being Chosen.” His gaze went to Cynna, still sitting in the room’s only chair. Instead of asking if she wanted to fuck—his usual greeting, if he was feeling friendly—he looked from her to Cullen, lying motionless in the bed. He walked up to the bed.
“Crazy bastard,” he muttered. “Got you good, didn’t they? Good thing Rule had the sense to call me. You say the assassin changes his appearance?”
It took Lily a second to realize he was asking her, not Cullen. “It may be that he fuzzes people’s minds.” Briefly she described what the various witnesses had seen. “If it was a real illusion, he’d look the same to everyone, wouldn’t he?”
Max turned to her. “Not dumb all the time, are you? Not exactly right, but not entirely dumb. Yeah, a true illusion would look the same to everyone. This guy’s doing something a lot simpler. Sounds like he told everyone to see someone they expected to see, and everyone’s brains filled in whatever appearance fit the bill.”
“Why didn’t he just tell everyone not to see him at all?”
“Because he’s not a goddamned idiot. In a crowd like that, he needed to be seen so people wouldn’t bump into him.” The eyebrows clenched in what might have been a thoughtful frown. “That’s some powerful mind-magic the bastard’s got. Big range. Real damned big.”
Worry bumped at Lily. “Can that kind of mind-magic work on you?”
Max snorted. “Not hardly. That’s close to compulsion, see—telling me to see something other than what’s there. I don’t like being told what to do.”
“Neither does my father,” Rule said dryly, “but the mind-magic seems to have worked on him.”
“Poor bastard lacks my genetic advantages.” He turned to Cynna with the oddest expression on his face. After a moment Lily recognized it. He was smiling.
Not at Cynna, Lily realized. At her belly.
Max marched up to Cynna and put both hands flat on her stomach.
“Hey,” Cynna said. “You’re supposed to ask before you touch.”
“Didn’t give you a baby present yet,” Max announced. “I’ll do that now.” He stared hard at her belly. After a moment his eyebrows flew up. “Son of a bitch.”
“He’s my son,” Cynna said, “so that means you’re calling me a bitch.”
“Don’t be so touchy. Also shut up. I need to pay attention.” He began muttering again, but not in English. Or any other language Lily had ever heard. It sounded kind of like someone with the hiccups speaking a mix of Russian and German, and it went on for several moments.
“There.” Max sounded deeply satisfied as he pulled his hands away from Cynna’s belly. His forehead was sweaty. “Gave him a birthing name.”
“You don’t get to name my baby!”
Max rolled his eyes. “I said birthing name, not call name. You’ve already given him one of those.”
“No, we haven’t. We’re still deciding. What’s a birthing name?”
“Well, he thinks he’s got a name already, so take it up with him if you don’t agree.”
>
Cynna’s eyes were wide. “You can talk to him?’
“Of course not. He’s not even born yet. The birthing name will help with that. Bend down.”
“What? Why?”
Another eye roll. “How’s the birthing name going to help if you don’t know it? Bend down so I can give it to you.”
Looking mystified and slightly cross, Cynna did. Max moved to her side and whispered something in her ear, and her expression changed. “Oh . . .”
Faintly a voice came from the bed. “You gave my son a birth name.”
Cullen was awake. He’d turned his head on the pillow and was watching Max.
Max scowled. “I should’ve asked. Was going to, but you went and got yourself damn near dead.”
“Thank you, my friend. K’recti afhar kaken.” Cullen’s hand moved slightly, reaching.
Max took it. Did he flush? Hard to say with that pasty skin. He said something back in the hiccupy not-quite-Russian tongue, adding in English, “Thought I’d better. Poor little tyke will be as puny as a human at first.”
Cullen smiled faintly. His gaze shifted to Cynna. “The birthing name . . . If the little rider gets in trouble—sick or badly hurt—you use it. Lets him draw on Max’s strength. Wears off after . . .” His gaze shifted back to Max, his eyebrows lifting slightly.
Max shrugged. “Don’t know, with a lupus babe. A year, anyway. Maybe more.”
“Wow.” Cynna heaved herself up, grabbed Max’s face with her two hands, bent, and kissed him on the mouth. “Thank you, Max.”
He definitely blushed this time. “You are most welcome. Say, you want to—”
“No.” Cynna grinned. “But thanks, anyway.”
Cullen’s gaze switched back to Cynna. He smiled—just before his eyes rolled back in his head.
Jason bent over him. “He’s okay. Back in sleep. I don’t know how he managed to wake from it in the first place.”
“The ward, I guess.” Cynna rubbed her stomach idly. “He and I put one up around the little rider last week.”
Max’s eyebrows climbed. “I didn’t think that was possible, not in living flesh.”
“Hey, I use my flesh for magic all the time. Seems to have worked. You triggered it when you did your naming thing, and the ward woke him.”
“Hmph. Well,” Max said, pulling a deck of cards from his pocket, “who’s up for a few hands of poker?”
“We’re leaving and Cynna’s going to lie down as soon as Jason gets her bed ready,” Rule said. He looked at Jason. “Don’t play for money. Max cheats.”
FOURTEEN
AT 2:38, Rule pulled to a stop in the parking garage beneath the ten-story high-rise he called home.
Or maybe he didn’t. Maybe he thought of this as the place he stayed. Lily decided to ask him about that some time when she wasn’t half asleep but still wired, her brain buzzing on caffeine and nerves.
A few months ago, the lease on Lily’s tiny apartment had come due. She’d allowed it to lapse. That was only sensible; she didn’t have room for Rule at her place, and he had plenty of space at his—two bedrooms, two baths, a small office, and an open living area with a killer view. Besides, his place was about twenty times nicer. It was like HGTV exploded there and left it ready for a photo shoot. And if the mate bond dictated that they cohabit, well, that was okay. She wanted to.
However sensible the decision, the results had been bumpy, but she figured that was normal. One of the bumps was the cat that came with her. Dirty Harry did not like being confined to an apartment. He’d been a stray when she found him—or when he found her—and was used to being outside. He also didn’t much like Rule. What cat would feel warm and cuddly with someone who smelled wolfish?
The second bump, of course, was money. Rule had oodles of it. She didn’t.
Some of that was his own money. Rule managed his clan’s investments and paid himself a percentage of the profits. He’d roughly tripled Nokolai’s wealth since assuming those duties and had managed to hang on to the wealth in the current downturn, so there had been plenty of profit to draw from. But Lily couldn’t discount the clan’s wealth because the line between personal property and the clan’s property wasn’t hard and fast in Rule’s mind.
This building belonged to Nokolai. Rule didn’t pay rent. He didn’t make a condo payment. And he’d been seriously insulted when she wanted to pay him for her share of the space. After prolonged discussion, they’d agreed she would pay half the utilities.
To Rule’s way of thinking, there was nothing wrong with the clan providing Lily’s living space as well as his. She was clan. She was Chosen. For Lily, a place she didn’t pay for wasn’t hers, wasn’t home.
But if the apartment didn’t feel like hers, it was still a great place. She was looking forward to getting there as she rode up in the elevator. She let her eyes half close and took Rule’s hand to help him with the claustrophobia he rarely admitted to—but which was one reason he lived in a high-rise. He rode in the elevator every day, and hated it each time. And proved to himself over and over that he could handle the fear.
Stupid, obsessive, determined man.
“Who was it you spoke to at the hospital?” the obsessive man asked. “The deputy.”
“Hmm? Oh, that was Cody. Deputy Beck, I ought to say. Why?”
“There was something in your voice when you spoke to him.”
There shouldn’t have been. She’d thought she kept it businesslike. Lily frowned, her eyes opening fully. “Discomfort, maybe. We, uh, we had a thing several years back, when he was with the SDPD. It didn’t end well.”
He didn’t say anything.
“That’s some really loud silence,” she observed, wide-awake now.
“There was something in your voice,” he repeated. “Something I haven’t heard when you speak to other men.”
Could he possibly be jealous? No, she decided. She was making a human assumption. He had some sort of curiosity or concern, but it wasn’t jealousy. That had been trained out of him, or else lupi lacked the jealousy gene.
And yet, stupid as the question might be, she was about to ask it when the elevator doors opened.
Then she couldn’t say anything. They weren’t alone.
There were eight apartments on this floor—five small ones east of the elevator, three larger units to the west of it. Rule had the corner unit on the north side. Two men flanked that door. One was five-eight, white, blue and brown, built slim. The other was six-three and two-ten with the dark eyes and creamy caramel complexion of a mixed heritage.
“Eric,” Rule said, giving a nod. “LeBron. All quiet?”
Eric and LeBron were Rule’s bodyguards. Two of them, anyway. The Leidolf Lu Nuncio had more or less forced them on Rule when he and Lily returned to San Diego—these two and four others. Each pair worked an eight-hour shift so that Rule could be covered 24/7 with a few exceptions . . . actually, a lot of exceptions. Rule said he preferred them to guard his home rather than his person most of the time.
Rule had sighed and accepted the necessity. “A Rho must have guards,” he’d said. “It’s as much a matter of status as safety, but Leidolf needs to know I am protected.”
The bodyguards were the most recent cohabiting bump, and the biggest for Lily. She had not adjusted to the loss of privacy.
“Except for the cat,” Eric said. “We checked it out when he started yowling, but he was just bored and pissy.”
“Did he get you?” Lily asked, digging in her purse for the key.
LeBron shrugged. “It wasn’t deep. Nearly healed now.”
“I need to advise you of a situation,” Rule said, and, as she’d expected, began briefing them of the attack on Cullen. It was only reasonable, unlike her spurt of resentment. Which she really wished she’d get over.
Lily let herself into the apartment. The thudding feet of a large beast greeted her. She closed the door quickly—and the ginger tabby streaking toward her stopped dead, glaring.
“Sorry, Harry,�
�� she said, moving close to scoop him up. “No nocturnal escapes for you tonight.” She rubbed him along his jaw.
He immediately turned on his motor. Lily was the only one Harry allowed this particular intimacy. Others might pet him upon invitation, but only she was permitted to pick him up. It made her feel absurdly honored. She continued stroking, giving attention to the place behind his ears he especially liked. One of those ears was missing a chunk. He’d been pretty torn up when she found him.
Or he found her. “Anything to report?” she asked the cat. “No? Okay, let me put my purse up, then you get your pay.” She headed for the bedroom at the other end of the apartment.
They’d left a single lamp on, but even without it there would have been enough light to find her way. The outside wall of the great room was glass and the air was clear tonight. City lights twinkled at her from that vast open expanse—Rule’s reward, she thought, for having endured the closed-in space of the elevator to get here. There were drapes, but Rule never closed them, and she’d learned to live with the openness, even at night. They were high enough for privacy.
She’d checked.
Harry grabbed her hand in his teeth when she passed the kitchen. Not biting. Getting her attention. “You know the drill,” she informed him. Even Harry didn’t get his way every time. Her weapon was in her purse. Guards or no guards, she wanted to have it close when she went to bed.
Besides, she liked having things in their place.
With her purse in its designated spot in the bedroom and her weapon next to the bed, she headed for the kitchen, still holding twenty pounds of battle-scarred tomcat. “Guess Rule and I wouldn’t be alone even without those guards, anyway,” she said as she deposited Harry on the kitchen’s shiny slate floor. “You’re always here. At least the lupus guards don’t scratch, bite, or swear at me.”
Compromise. Living together was all about compromise. She came with a cat; Rule came with guards.
Plenty of compromising there, too, though not between her and Rule. She opened the refrigerator and took out a baggie with scraps of deli ham. Harry plunked his rear down next to his bowl and watched intently.