by Eileen Wilks
“Mmm-hmm.” He trailed kisses down her throat. “I’ve been frantic. Knowing how you felt about the mate bond, I thought . . . I feared . . . I’m afraid I had as little trust in us as you do.”
“I . . . It’s not that. I know what you believe—that the survival of your people depends on—on—”
“Planting my seed in many wombs?” He straightened, cupping her face, smiling down at her. “You’ll forgive me, I hope, if I say, ‘Been there, done that.’ I don’t want to do it anymore. Only you, Lily. I want only you.”
Her heart turned over. She could swear it just inverted itself in that moment, opening up wider, bigger. She slid her hands up to his shoulders. “They’ll put pressure on you.”
He cocked one eyebrow. “You believe I succumb to peer pressure?”
“Father pressure,” she said. “Rho pressure.”
“He’ll learn to accept my decision. Or not.” His thumbs stroked the sides of her face. “I was going to inform you that you were not free. That I was not letting you go, no matter what. I had quite the little speech ready, but you wouldn’t let me use it.”
Easy, so easy, to smile at him now. “I was too busy keeping you from telling me that, however regretfully, you were going to have to go on that seed-planting mission from time to time.”
“Idiots,” he said again, his eyes smiling . . . and his hands moving. Warming her breasts. “Both of us.”
“Uh, Rule, this isn’t the time or place—”
“We’re alone.” He pressed a kiss to her collarbone, then flicked it with his tongue. The warmth of his hands lingered on her breasts as they moved again, sliding down to her rump, then up again.
“That’s a point.”
“And I want you.”
“Mmm.” Heat arrived, a languorous, swelling heat, making her stretch like a cat beneath his stroking hands. “I might be persuadable.”
“Let’s see.”
This kiss was as soft as the first had been hard. He licked her lip, then sucked gently on it. She did the same with his tongue. Their mouths parted and joined, first from this angle, then that. The climb into desire was easy, slow, and mutual.
He wore jeans, like her, with his shirt untucked. She slid her hands beneath the warm cotton of his shirt, needing the feel of his skin. His arms tightened. Her breath caught. He cupped her.
Between one breath and the next, the easy climb was over.
Need had teeth. They sank into her, pumping in lust like a venom, hot and swirling. She gasped, her fingers digging into his muscles as she rocked against his hand. “Rule.”
“Jeans,” he said, and tugged at her zipper. “I hate jeans.”
She nearly strangled on a laugh. “Harder on me than you, since we can just unzip yours and there you are. Here, let me . . .” She helped him tug her jeans and panties down, but they caught on her shoes. One ungraceful hop and a tug, and she had one leg free.
That was all he required, apparently. He swept her up, taking her to the ground with him on the bottom. She swung her bare leg over his hip, looking down at his flushed skin, at his dark eyes looking up at her.
He cupped her face. “I thought I lost you.”
“You didn’t. I’m here. I want you in me.”
He agreed—wordlessly, urgently, freeing himself from his jeans.
She slid down over him, moving as slowly as she could make herself go. Wanting to memorize every sensation. Looking into his eyes the whole time.
He gasped. “Lily—”
“Almost,” she whispered. “Almost . . .” Then she was fully seated. She bent to kiss him slowly, lingeringly. Let their lips separate, just barely, and whispered against his mouth, “Okay. Okay, no more slow.”
“Thank God.”
From that moment on, their loving wasn’t entirely mutual. Lily was strong and agile and quick, but she wasn’t anywhere near as quick as Rule was when he got in a hurry. And he clearly wanted speed. He gripped her hips and pumped fast, then faster, and the raw bolts of feeling tore a cry from her throat, ripping through her so hard and fast she couldn’t keep up, couldn’t—
And then she did, convulsing from the inside out. One blind second later, she felt him empty himself into her. She collapsed on top of him.
After a moment, she felt him stroking her hair. She smiled and considered opening her eyes. “Mmm. That answers one question.”
“What’s that?”
“It wasn’t just the mate bond that had us yanking each other’s clothes off all the time, was it?”
“There was some question about that?”
He’d put just enough offended hauteur into that question to make her smile widen. “I love you.”
“I love you.” He paused. “We’re okay, then?”
The question was flavored with just enough uncertainty to make her prop herself up so she could look at him. “We’re okay. Not dignified,” she added, looking at the jeans and panties still wrapped around her left leg. “But very much okay.”
RULE found the body in a tiny clearing just before eleven.
Lily could hardly believe he’d done it. He’d coursed in wolf-form, naturally, slowly covering a fifty-yard swath along the route between the bodies and the picnic area where the wraith had appeared last night.
Such an arbitrary number, fifty yards. If the body had been buried another ten yards away, he wouldn’t have found it.
She’d sent for the ERT—and then she’d poured the salt she’d brought on the grave.
Rule had cocked an eyebrow at her. “You’re planning to remove the body.”
“The Baron didn’t say to salt the body. He said to salt the grave, and this is it.” Probably. It was worth trying, anyway, and not just because the Baron said to. She remembered that cold . . . Was that how the wraith felt all the time?
And then they waited. If the wraith was around, she never felt it.
Rule was positive a body lay beneath the soil. He couldn’t be sure it had been human. After so long, there was no way to tell by smell alone. It was just possible someone had buried Fido way out here. But not, Lily thought, very likely.
It was also possible they’d found another victim of the wraith, rather than the wraith’s mortal remains. Lily didn’t know how they’d be able to tell. Signs of a violent death wouldn’t be enough. The wraith could be the product of murder. Such a secret grave suggested as much.
When the ERT arrived, she advised them of the salt. She got some looks for that, but no one protested.
Whoever had handled the burial had worked hard. The ERT was nearly four feet down and still digging—slowly, carefully—when Lily appointed herself gofer. She couldn’t help with the excavation. She wasn’t qualified. So she headed back to their vehicle, which was parked as close as they could get it, about half a mile away. They had a cooler with soft drinks there.
When she got back, the chief tech was wiping his arm across his sweaty forehead. He looked up as she approached and accepted the Coke she held out. “Looks like someone, somewhere, gave Fido a really decent burial.”
“You’re kidding.” She put down the cooler and came closer to the grave.
Rule stood at its edge, staring down. “Not a dog,” he said quietly. “A wolf.”
“Don’t see how you can tell.” The man squinted at Rule dubiously. “Sure, there’s some fur left, and it could belong to a wolf. Could belong to a husky, too, or a plain old mutt. We’ll have to send the bones off to be sure.”
“It’s the way he’s buried.” Rule held one arm out and curved it in a half circle. “Nose to tail. That’s the traditional burial position when one of my people dies in wolf-form. We don’t put our dead in boxes.”
Lily touched his arm. “He’s lupus?”
Rule nodded. He was wearing his blank face, the one he donned when there was way too much going on inside. “I think . . .” He drew in a breath suddenly, as if he’d been forgetting about air. “Beneath him you should find some clothing, possibly even identification. When one
of us dies as wolf, we include his human side by burying human things with him.” He looked at her. “That’s why the burial was secret, why the death won’t be on your lists. When one of us dies as wolf, he doesn’t end up in a human cemetery.”
“But . . . here?” She gestured at the forest around them. “If he’s Leidolf, wouldn’t he be buried at Leidolf Clanhome?”
“Maybe he loved to run here and requested this as his burial spot. Maybe he’s not Leidolf and was killed by them, so they buried him decently.” He sighed, and what she saw now was sadness. “It might not be your wraith, Lily. We may have disturbed this one’s rest for nothing. I’ll call Alex. He’ll know of any burials here.”
Alex didn’t answer his phone, and it took another forty minutes to remove the bones. Underneath, as Rule had said, were the rotted remains of clothing. Jeans, maybe, though it was hard to say. The boots were filthy, but almost intact.
One thing was entirely intact, because it had been sealed in a plastic bag—the see-through kind with a zipper, like you’d use to save leftovers in the freezer. Lily rubbed dirt off the bag to get a better look. “Oh, Jesus,” she whispered as the puzzle pieces suddenly fell in place
It was a baby blanket. Blue and green, faded from pastel to ice colors. Crocheted by loving hands, not bought at some superstore. And sealed up against decay. “Rule.” She showed him the bag. “Is this unusual? Sealing it up this way?”
“It’s not our practice. What we bury with the dead we expect to go to earth with them.”
“But she was human,” Lily murmured, turning the bag over in her gloved hands. “She wasn’t clan. And she loved him so very much.” Only a mother would bury her son with his baby blanket. One she’d made for him. One she refused to allow to decompose gracefully into the earth.
She looked up. “Call Cullen for me.”
“Agent Yu,” one of the techs called. “Got something here you want.”
Oh, yes, he did. A wallet.
The leather was badly rotted, much worse than the boots. Pieces crumbled off despite her care, but she got it open. The driver’s license inside was plastic and intact. She pulled it out and rubbed the dirt off with her thumb to reveal a small photo of a smiling, red-haired young man.
Charles Arthur Kessenblaum.
THEY were nearly back to town when Rule’s phone chimed. Lily was on her third call, this one from Deacon.
She’d notified Brown and asked Deacon to send someone to pick up Crystal Kessenblaum—not as a suspect, but as a witness. Crystal wasn’t a medium. Her first call had been to Marcia Farquhar, but the blasted woman was in court. But surely the woman who’d been godmother to one of Mrs. Kessenblaum’s children would know about the other. Hadn’t Louise told her best friend the truth about Toby, right from the first?
They’d drifted apart, Farquhar had said, over the years. But not completely. Surely not so much that she wouldn’t know about Charles Arthur.
Charley. That’s what the women at the gens compleo had called him. He’d been twenty-three when he died. Last night would have been his coming-of-age party.
It was the mother. Lily knew that in her gut and her bone, and Cullen had agreed it was possible. Mrs. Kessenblaum created an abomination not because she wanted a soul-slave, but because she wanted her son. She’d tried to bring him back to life, or keep him with her as a spirit. Like those foolish bygone sorcerers who’d made zombies, she’d refused to accede to death.
“Crystal’s not at her apartment,” Deacon said. “She’s not at work, either. Hasn’t been in for days.”
Shit. Preoccupied, Lily barely glanced at Rule when his phone rang and he answered. But some instinct made her look again.
She told Deacon to hold on a moment and put her palm over the phone’s mic. “What is it?”
Rule shook his head at her, listening intently. “You’re sure? Yes, of course you are. I don’t . . . Just a minute.” He looked at Lily. “Toby went with his mother this morning.”
She nodded. They were going to the miniature golf place, then Alicia was going pick up Louise and they’d all go to lunch together.
“He—they—haven’t come back. And Alicia isn’t answering her phone.”
THIRTY-FIVE
LILY was certain Alicia had snatched Toby. Rule didn’t believe it. Alicia had concocted a crazy plan, true, but she wasn’t a lawbreaker by nature. She wasn’t a woman who would throw away her entire life in order to steal her son from the father she’d agreed, after all these years, could have him.
And it didn’t matter which of them was right, not immediately. Lily had done what was needed. She’d gotten Deacon to put out an APB for Alicia’s car—having memorized the make, model, and even the license tags. Rule wanted to kiss her for that.
Probably, he told himself, Alicia’s car had broken down and she’d left her phone somewhere, or forgotten to charge it. That happened. She’d feel foolish when some officer saw the car and pulled over, but she’d get the help she needed.
There was no reason to panic.
“I’VE got to go,” Lily said, holding both of Rule’s hands in hers.
They were at Louise’s house. He’d had to come here, of course, to be with Louise . . . to be here when Toby and Alicia arrived. But Lily couldn’t stay. He understood that. Finding the wraith’s creator had to be her priority. “Of course. I’ll call you when Toby turns up.”
She thought he was deluding himself. He saw that clearly in her face, however cop-blank she made it.
“Alicia wouldn’t kidnap him,” he said again. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but she wouldn’t do that. Her career means too much. Her new husband matters, too. She’s not the type to go on the run.”
Louise came in. “Of course not. I just can’t understand where she is.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes were frightened.
Lily squeezed Rule’s hand, then let go and went to Louise. “There haven’t been any auto accidents that could have involved her. Sheriff Deacon checked for us.”
“I know. I’m just being a mother and worrying.” Her smile wobbled. “Goes with the territory.”
The doorbell rang. Louise rushed to answer, with Rule and Lily right behind. Though why would Alicia and Toby ring the bell? Surely Toby had a key, even if Alicia didn’t.
And he didn’t hear Toby. There were undoubtedly moments when Toby didn’t chatter, but coming back from an outing with his mother . . .
Of course Louise flung open the door without checking first. “Oh. Oh, come in.”
The disappointment in her voice stopped Rule cold. He closed his eyes. He would not panic.
“Cynna’s flying out,” Cullen said briskly. “She managed to snag a seat on the same flight as Nettie, in fact. With the time difference, that has her getting into Charlotte about midnight.”
Rule opened his eyes and saw his friend in front of him, holding his ratty backpack by one strap. “Cynna’s coming.”
“Yep. I’ve got a couple of Find spells, and I’ll try them, but they’re nothing compared to what she can do.” He grinned. “I admit it even when she isn’t here, ready to thunk me.”
Midnight. Rule wanted to believe Cynna wouldn’t be needed. Surely they’d find Toby long before midnight. But if they didn’t . . . if they didn’t, Cynna would. She was the best, quite literally the best, at what she did. So good she’d been involuntarily recruited by agents of another realm for a while.
She was also about five months pregnant. It should have been seven months, but the time she’d spent in Edge had passed differently from here on Earth.
Rule swallowed. “Thank you.”
Lily glanced at Cullen and got a nod. “I’m off,” she said.
“I’ll keep reading,” he assured her.
Rule frowned. “Wait a minute. Cullen, Lily will need you. You’re going with her.”
“No, I’m not.”
“I do not need a babysitter.”
“Shut up, Rule,” Cullen said gently. “I’m not much help, I know, but yo
u’re stuck with me.”
Lily put it another way. She came up to him, kissed his cheek, and said, “Not a babysitter. A friend. He wouldn’t be much help for me anyway, not until he figures out how to stop a wraith.”
“Like I said”—Cullen jiggled his backpack—“I’ll keep reading.”
Lily reached for the door—and Rule spun the other way. He’d heard the back gate—and now footsteps in the yard. Running. Someone light or small. Child-size. He was at the back door by the time a small fist started pounding on it.
He jerked it open. “Talia!”
The girl turned a frantic, teary face up toward him. “She’s got Toby! The bad one, the one who made th-the wraith. The Baron told me.”
Lily came up behind him. “The Baron?”
She nodded jerkily. “Yes, h-he’s not a ghost. Well, he sorta is, only he’s different, and he understands things here more than ghosts usually do, and he’s really clear, not wispy at all. But only part of what he said made sense.”
“What did he look like, Talia?” Cullen asked.
“Tall, with a funny black hat and black clothes. His skin was real dark, darker than mine, but his face was white. Truly white, not just pale. Sometimes,” she said, her voice dropping, “it was almost like there was just a skull, not a face at all. That was scary.”
“That’s the Baron, all right.”
“Come in.” Rule moved aside and, as soon as she’d entered, went down on one knee in front of her. “What did he say, Talia?”
She scrunched up her face. “This is what I’m supposed to tell you. She’s got Toby. He said you knew who she was, that she made the wraith. She’s gonna do a big spell with Toby, but the Baron said she’s got it all wrong. Th-that’s when his face looked like a skull, and he wasn’t laughing. He looked . . .” She shuddered.
Rule put an arm around her. “We’ll stop her, Talia.”
“Yes! But you have to stop the wraith, too, Mr. Turner,” Talia said, her eyes huge. “You and Agent Yu. He said you have to do it together.”
Lily squeezed Rule’s shoulder. “He give any hint how?”