by Eileen Wilks
So what kind of “present” had they left for her?
She rounded the corner and found out.
“Detective Yu,” Rule Turner said, rising politely from the battered wooden chair to the left of her desk. “Your colleagues assured me it was all right to wait for you here.” His smile was crooked and charming. “I think I’ve been used.”
“Um,” she said cleverly. He was wearing black again—an open-necked black shirt with a black jacket and slacks. Very Hollywood. The jacket looked as if it had cost as much as her car was worth. “I’m afraid so. The joke is strictly on me, however.” It was a backhanded jibe at her lack of a social life. She sighed. “Cop humor has a lot in common with kindergarten humor, only more R-rated.”
“The chief sent him to see you,” Mech said. He was sitting on Lily’s desk, trying to look relaxed.
Mech was ten years older than Lily, five inches taller, and eighty pounds heavier, with every ounce muscle. He was a quiet, methodical man with Job’s patience, skin the color of her favorite caramel latte, and a strong streak of the puritan.
Mech didn’t do relaxed well. “He—uh, His Highness wants to assist in the investigation.”
Turner shook his head. “I’m not a highness. The press likes to call me prince, but the press likes to sell magazines and newspapers.”
“I’ve noticed that about them.” Lily slung her backpack onto her desk. “Thanks, Mech. You can tell T.J. he’s on my list. Brady, too.”
Mech hesitated, as if he weren’t sure he should leave her alone with Turner. She flicked him a glance as she unzipped her backpack. He nodded reluctantly and left.
She pulled out her laptop. “While we always appreciate civic-minded citizens, there’s something of a problem with one of the suspects in an investigation assisting in that investigation.”
Turner’s straight slashes of eyebrows lifted. “You’re blunt.”
“But I did use my polite face. Chief Delgado sent you to me?”
“He did. I called him this morning, offering my help. If you want to catch a lupus, you need to know something about us, and I doubt you do. That’s not a criticism. There’s very little real information available.”
“You mean Hollywood didn’t get it right with Witches Sabbat? ” She shook her head. “Next you’ll be telling me Charlie Chan wasn’t really Chinese.”
He chuckled. “Point taken. He was played by an Occidental actor, wasn’t he?”
“Sydney Toler, among others.” Lily would never admit she had a sneaking fondness for the old Charlie Chan movies, chock-full as they were of cliché and stereotyping. But they were so much more fun than James Bond or Bruce Lee. Chan had relied on brains, not technology or kung fu, to defeat the bad guys. “Your information might be difficult for me to verify.”
“And you have no intention of trusting me. Understood. But I’ve a strong interest in seeing this case solved quickly. I want to see only one lupus blamed for the killing, not all of us. And I don’t want that one to be me. I didn’t do it, but you’ll need proof to believe that.”
Taking a sip of the cooling sludge in her mug, she studied him. It wasn’t unheard of for a lupus leader to cooperate with the police. If a werewolf went on a rampage and wasn’t caught, the repercussions for all lupi could be severe. People tended to panic about that sort of thing. And there was a bill coming up in Congress—the Species Citizenship Bill—that could be affected by adverse public reaction to the case.
But the lupi version of cooperating with the police didn’t necessarily involve niceties like testimony or evidence. They’d been known to deposit a body at a police station with a note saying that the problem had been taken care of.
She set her mug down. “Last night you said you didn’t have any idea who killed Carlos Fuentes.”
“I don’t.”
“I won’t tolerate any form of vigilantism. Murder is murder in my book.”
“An admirable attitude. Of course, the law only considers it murder if we are killed while two-footed.” He waved that aside. His hands were graceful and long-fingered, like a pianist’s. It was hard to imagine them turning into paws. “But you misunderstand. I’m not offering to find your killer for you. I’m offering to brief you on lupus culture and habits.”
If he was dealing straight, this was a first. On the candid and forthcoming scale, the lupi ranked about even with the Mob or the CIA. “I do want to talk with you,” she said, reaching for the printer cable and plugging it into her laptop. “But I’m due in the captain’s office in . . . damn,” she muttered when she glanced at her watch. “Two minutes. If you wouldn’t mind waiting in the other room, Sergeant Meckle could get you a cup of coffee.”
He winced. “Are you referring to whatever is in your mug?”
She smiled. “Too strong for you?”
“You give it to suspects to soften them up, right?”
“Only works on the wimps.”
He shook his head. “I’m in trouble. Already you’ve discovered my weakness. I’m a coffee snob.”
It wasn’t what he said so much as the way he said it. She burst out laughing. “Don’t let anyone tell you you do humble well. You don’t.”
“We can’t expect to master every skill.” He smiled, and his gaze flickered over her—too briefly to be insulting, but his appreciation was obvious. “I have the feeling you don’t do humble well, either, Detective.”
“My grandmother claims that humility is the public face of envy.” And why was she talking about Grandmother to this man?
The little ping that had landed with a tug in her belly might be a clue. He’d probably picked up on her response, too, dammit. He’d been winning at boy-girl games for a long time. She shook her head. “You’re good, I’ll give you that. But I’m not playing.”
“And you’re direct. I like that.” He moved closer, smiling, and brushed his fingertips over the ends of her hair. “Your hair smells of oranges.”
She leveled a stare at him and ignored the flutter of pleasure. “You’re beginning to annoy me.”
“You’d like to keep this impersonal.” He nodded and let his hand drop. “Reasonable, from your point of view. But you should know I’m not good at treating a woman I’m attracted to impersonally.”
“Another of those skills you haven’t mastered, I take it. Cheer up. It’s never too late. You can start working on it right away.”
His lips twitched. “I have a ten-thirty appointment, and you’re late for your meeting. Do you work on Saturdays, Detective?”
“I will be. Why?”
“Why don’t we have a nice, businesslike lunch tomorrow and discuss things? Somewhere public, to encourage me to behave myself.”
She’d seen him in public last night at Club Hell, and he hadn’t been behaving himself. But so what if she couldn’t trust him? She trusted herself. “That works. You know Bishop’s, on Eighth?”
“I’ll find it.” His eyes laughed at her as he held out his hand. “One o’clock?”
“Okay.” He might have meant the handshake as a dare. She accepted it for her own reasons—mostly to get a feel for his brand of magic. His hand closed around hers, large and warm and solid.
Her stomach hollowed. Her breath went shallow, her head light, as if she’d lost oxygen. The muscles in her inner thighs quivered, and she stared at his mouth—at the neat, white teeth revealed by lips that had parted, like hers. Lips that looked soft. She wanted to touch them.
Her eyes flew to his. She saw flecks of gold in the dark irises, and the way his pupils had swollen. The pink triangles at the inner corners of his eyes. The dark, thick eyelashes. And the way his lids had pulled back in shock.
He dropped her hand. For a moment they stared at each other. Her heart pounded. His nostrils were flared, his breathing fast.
Dear God. What did she say? How did she put that moment away, unmake it?
He broke the silence. “I won’t be behaving myself,” he told her grimly. And turned and left.
FIV
E
THE hall leading to the captain’s corner office was beige—beige walls, beige woodwork, beige carpet. No windows. Lily headed down that beige tunnel with her heartbeat still unsettled, her report in her hand, and her mind in a whirl.
Popular fiction was full of stories about the supposed sexual power of lupi, their ability to entrance helpless females. Most experts believed those were self-perpetuating myths. Wickedness has always possessed a certain glamour, and mystery casts its own spell.
Until a few moments ago, Lily had agreed with the experts.
Now . . . well, whatever had just happened between her and Turner shouldn’t have. No question about that. What’s more, it shouldn’t have been possible. Even if lupi did possess some arcane sexual power, she was supposed to be immune. Magic slid over her surface, prickling along her skin. It didn’t get inside and affect her.
Yet she couldn’t accept what had happened as normal sexual attraction—it had hit too fast, too hard. And he’d looked so shocked. As if he, too, had been blindsided . . .
Lily shook her head, trying to physically throw off confusion. None of that mattered as much as what hadn’t happened. She’d shaken the hand of a lupi prince—and felt not one tingle of magic. For that, she had no explanation at all.
She rapped once on the captain’s door, then opened it.
“Glad you could join us, Detective,” Captain Randall said dryly.
Lily checked on the threshold. The room held three men, not one.
Frederick Randall sat behind his desk. The captain was a short, bald man on the shady side of sixty with all of his features crowded together in the bottom half of his face. He looked like a bureaucrat—well-fed, not too bright. It was a misleading impression.
The other two men wore suits and professionally grave expressions.
Uh-oh, Lily thought. Feds. “Yes, sir. Sorry I’m late.” “These are Special Agents Karonski and Croft from the FBI. They’re interested in the Fuentes case.”
Got it in one. Lily nodded a greeting, but doubt tugged at her. Randall wouldn’t have told them about her—would he?
The two men started to stand. Randall waved. “Sit, sit.”
It was a corner office, but it wasn’t large or fancy. The only empty chair was plain wood and sat on the right of the captain’s desk, which put her sideways to him and to the men sitting across from him.
The agent closest to her had good teeth, skin several shades darker than Mech’s, and a pleasant smile. He was growing more forehead than hair these days. “I’m Martin Croft,” he said. “As I explained to your captain, we’re not claiming jurisdiction—”
“We could.” The other one didn’t smile. “Karonski,” he said to Lily.
The captain snorted. “You don’t have a leg to stand on.”
“Murder by magical means is a federal offense.”
Lily tried to be tactful. “Um . . . magical means? Fuentes was killed by teeth, not a death spell.”
“According to the captain, he was killed by a magical creature,” Karonski said. “That’s murder by magical means.”
Her eyebrows rose. Her captain’s response was more direct. “Bullshit. Even if you convinced a jury that murder done by one of the Blood constitutes murder by magic, the courts would throw out any conviction.”
“Maybe.” Karonski was eyeing Lily with disapproval. “She’s young.”
“Not as young as she looks, and she’s fully qualified. In addition, she has contacts in the, ah, paranormal community that may be useful. Is that your report you’re clutching, Yu?”
Okay, he hadn’t told them. She hadn’t really thought he would. “Yes, sir.” She leaned forward and handed it to him.
Croft said wryly, “There’s some disagreement here, obviously. Since this is the first murder purported to have been committed by a lupus in wolf form since the Supreme Court’s ruling—”
“The first?” Lily said, surprised. “In the country?”
“The first when the killer’s identity is unknown,” he amended. “There was a murder in Connecticut, but the case was, ah . . . solved by the lupus community.”
He meant that the killer had been killed by his own people. She remembered reading about it. His body—in wolf form—and a signed confession had been left at the courthouse. “And that business in Texas last year was ruled self-defense.”
His eyes widened slightly. “Yes. An interesting case, from a legal standpoint.”
She nodded. The lupus involved had been in man form when attacked by a dozen gang members. He’d Changed. Three of the gang members had survived. “The ACLU was involved.”
“It’s a landmark, the first judicial recognition that the right of self-defense can apply to a lupus in wolf form. Limited in its application, of course, because of the way the judgment was worded.”
The defense had argued that, under the circumstances, Changing was no different than loosing a trained guard dog. That the defendant’s wolf form had protected his human form, which was legally entitled to self-defense. The appeals court had agreed, but . . . “The judges waffled around about what constitutes sufficient ‘clear and present danger’ to justify turning wolf. So it’s a precedent, but not a clear one.”
He smiled. “I begin to see why your captain wanted you on this case. I don’t often encounter officers with such a good grasp of my turf. Ah . . . I don’t think Captain Randall mentioned it, but we’re MCD.”
Magical Crimes Division. Well, that made some sense, but calling this a federal case was a stretch. But they weren’t claiming it officially, were they? Just putting the captain on notice that they could make things difficult if he didn’t cooperate.
Cooperate how? What did they want? She glanced at Randall, who spoke without looking up from her report. “Your written reports will be copied to these gentlemen after I’ve seen them. Go ahead and hit the high points for them.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Croft said. “But we can wait and read the report. Between your briefing and what’s in the papers, we have the basics, I think. Except for one thing. I need to know how sure you are, Detective, that the murder was committed by a lupus.”
“For proof, you’ll have to speak with the coroner’s office. But I’m pretty sure of it.” She couldn’t tell them why she was so certain, and it would be inadmissible, anyway. But there were plenty of of other indicators.
Lily reconstructed the attack, describing the wounds, blood splatter, and severed hand. “One of the first-on-scene officers used to be X-Squad,” she finished. “Fifteen years’ service. He believes the attacker was a werewolf.”
“Lupus,” Croft corrected her absently. “It is consistent with a lupus attack.”
Karonski scowled. “Consistent isn’t conclusive. Now and then someone who wants to get away with murder tries to make it look like a lupus kill. Though most attempts are crude,” he admitted. “This isn’t.”
She studied him. Average height, bad suit, built like a barrel. A little younger than Croft, and a wedding ring on his left hand, which Croft lacked. “The killer almost certainly left saliva in the wounds. The lab may not be able to run a DNA match on it, but they can tell if it came from one of the Blood. Someone clever enough to fake those wounds—which I do not think were faked—would know that.”
“Magic can create some great fakes.”
That jolted her. “Is that possible? I mean . . . I suppose the wounds themselves could be faked, but could magic duplicate the kind of weird results typical of body fluids from a lupus?”
“I don’t know,” he said gloomily. “Do you?”
It was a disquieting thought. Magic on that level was illegal, of course—but so was murder. “If such a thing were possible, it would constitute murder by magical means. Is that why you’re here?”
Croft shrugged. “Partly. We need to confirm or deny the possibility. There’s also a concern that this will have political repercussions.”
Lily frowned. “The Species Citizenship Bill?” Congress had almost
managed to duck its responsibility by losing the bill in committee, but its sponsors were pushing for a vote.
“Politics.” Randall spat out the word, putting down Lily’s report. “Not my job, thank God. When you talk about magically faking things, you’re talking sorcery.”
True. Witchcraft couldn’t change the basic nature of things, and she’d know if sorcery were involved . . . wouldn’t she?
Croft was unmoved. “It’s a possibility.”
“It’s a dead art,” the captain said impatiently. “Sure, we run across a dabbler now and then, someone who thinks he’s found a fragment of the Codex Arcanum. But no one’s been capable of transformative magic since the Purge.”
“Which was a European phenomenon,” Croft pointed out. “There are African sorcerers, and rumors of sorcerers who escaped the Communist cleansing of the sixties.”
Randall shrugged. “There are always rumors, and African sorcery is more like witchcraft than true sorcery. Or so I’ve read. You saying different?”
Croft and Karonski exchanged one of those impenetrable looks shared by longtime partners and married couples. Croft spoke. “We’re not suggesting you should doubt your laboratory results.”
“That’s good, because I don’t intend to. You two are supposed to be hoodoo experts, not stringers for the Rational Inquirer.”
That irritated Croft. “The only real experts in magic are its practitioners. Abel and I can advise you about investigative procedures and apprehension, and we know a few things about lupi that aren’t common knowledge. This case is likely to set precedents. The agency feels our experience could be valuable to you.”
Oh, my. Lily’s lips twitched.
Captain Randall’s gaze swung to her. “Something funny, Yu?”
Her sense of humor was going to get her in trouble yet. “I just realized that these gentlemen are offering to be expert consultants.”
“That’s right.” Croft smiled at her.