by Eileen Wilks
“Good. Nettie’s going to need it.” With that the old woman put her hands on Nettie’s shoulders and closed her eyes.
Lily moved closer to Rule to ask quietly, “What’s she doing?”
“Feeding Nettie power. From the clan. She . . .” He stopped. Swallowed. “They’ve done this before. The Rhej can’t heal—it isn’t her Gift—but she can shape the power so Nettie can use it.”
Lily dragged in another breath, let it out slowly. “What the hell happened?”
“I wasn’t close enough to see. I heard Cynna cry out, so I came running. Cullen was down. I smelled blood. I didn’t see any, but I knew he’d been injured. I gave the alert for an attack.”
A middle-aged woman seated on the ground nearby spoke, her face incredulous. “But you were there, Rule. I saw you. You were standing right behind Cullen.”
“No, he wasn’t,” the man on her right said. “I was beside you, Sandra, and I didn’t see Rule until he came running up.”
“He was there,” she insisted.
Sandra was not going to make a good witness, but maybe someone with Rule’s height and coloring . . . ? Lily glanced at her watch. “We have to get the field cleared.”
“I’ll do that,” Isen said from behind her.
She turned and met his eyes.
Isen Turner wasn’t a short man, but neither was he as annoyingly tall as his sons. His eyes were the color of wet bark, topped by bushy brows that lacked the elegance of Rule’s. Those eyes blazed now in a face gone still.
He was furious. In complete control, but beneath that, the beast raged. Startled, she spoke formally. “Thank you. I need possible witnesses separated from the rest. Also from each other, as much as possible. I don’t want them discussing what they saw or thought they saw. I need to be sure no one leaves, too.”
“They won’t leave. They won’t discuss it if I tell them not to.”
She wondered at his cooperation. Lupi were not known for welcoming the authorities into their affairs, and Isen would see this as a Nokolai matter. “You’re accepting my authority in this?”
“I accept necessity. You’re Nokolai. You will handle this.”
“Uh . . . for now. The dispatcher will have notified the sheriff’s department.”
“So Benedict told me. He’s notified the guards at the gate to admit whoever they send, but you’ll be in charge.”
“I don’t know if this falls within my jurisdiction. By law, magical crimes are those—”
He made a chopping motion with one hand. “You’ll find a way to work it. I don’t care how. I haven’t asked for obedience from you because you weren’t raised to understand the need, but you are Nokolai. You’ll find a way.”
Prickles traveled up her arms. She wanted to agree. She was immune to whatever pull his mantle gave him, yet she wanted to agree. “And if I don’t?”
A glint of humor passed through his eyes. “Oh, I’m not fool enough to threaten you. No, you’ll find a way to make this your case because that’s best for Nokolai—as you’ll understand when you’ve thought on it. And you are Nokolai.”
He turned abruptly and raised his voice to that full-throated bellow. “Nokolai! This is an offense against the clan.” He paused, letting them absorb that. Calling a clan-offense was serious. “Our Chosen will act for me in this, along with my Lu Nuncio. Anyone with information that might help, come forward. Anyone who was close to Seabourne just before the attack—even if you don’t think you can help—come forward. You will not speak of it to each other. Come forward and wait. Children and tenders, go to the Center. Everyone else, go to the south end of the field. Quickly. We need room for the helicopter.”
He turned to Benedict, who’d come up as he was speaking. “Make sure our elders are comfortable.”
Benedict gave a single nod and moved away.
“Does he magically know when you need him?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind. Did you see what happened?”
“No. I was at least twenty yards away, talking with Sybil and Toby.”
Toby. God, she hadn’t thought—“Where is he?”
“With Sybil, of course. She was a tender for thirty years. She’ll take him to the Center with the other kids.”
Guilt washed through her. She shoved it back. No time for that now—but it was just as well she had plenty of help with this parenting business. She wasn’t very good at it yet.
The crowd was moving, most heading for the south end of the field, as instructed, while a few swam against the current to come forward, also as instructed. Isen directed them to wait about twenty feet away.
They were all so orderly—no panic, no one complaining or assuming that Isen couldn’t possibly have meant him. Or her. They scarcely spoke. She felt Rule move up beside her. “It’s kind of eerie.”
“What?”
“Them.” She gestured. “Everyone’s just . . . They’re so calm. Earlier one of them got so excited from watching a dance that he Changed. No one’s Changing now.”
“Isen is drawing heavily on the mantle.” He paused, then added, “They don’t smell calm. They trust him to deal with the situation, but they aren’t calm.”
“Hmm.” Scent-blind, lupi called humans. They had a point. She turned to Rule. “I need to talk to the wits. You can help with that.”
As Lu Nuncio, he’d smell it if they lied—the lupus ones, anyway. According to Rule, lupi couldn’t lie to someone carrying a portion of their clan’s mantle without reeking of guilt.
Rule didn’t respond. He was looking at Cullen, his face blank. Shut down.
Lily realized she was staring, too, watching Cullen’s chest as if her eyes could keep it lifting, ever so slightly, with his breath. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and touched Rule’s arm once. Then moved away.
Keeping Cullen alive wasn’t her job. Nettie and the Rhej were in charge there, and thank God for that. She’d do what she knew. She moved closer and crouched down beside Cynna. “Can you answer a couple questions?”
Cynna nodded without taking her eyes off Cullen.
“You were with Cullen when it happened.”
“Yeah, I—I was standing beside him. Someone came up to congratulate us. I didn’t know him, but Cullen called him Mike. They were talking when he . . . Cullen jerked, then he fell. He just collapsed. I don’t know who was behind us. It was crowded. I didn’t notice.”
Suddenly Cynna gripped Lily’s arm, her fingers digging in. The bones of her face stood out starkly. “You’ll find him. Or her. Whoever did this, you’ll find them.”
In the face of that need, Lily didn’t speak of jurisdictions. “I will. Cullen’s going to make it, Cynna. He’s got too much holding him here. The Rhej and Nettie will hold on to him in their way, but you and the baby—you’ll keep him here, too.”
Cynna jerked out a single nod and looked at Cullen again. One hand went to her belly, rubbing gently. Her lips moved. Lily caught the words, just barely . . . “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
Among her other improbabilities, Cynna was Catholic. Maybe that helped right now. Lily hoped so. She stood.
Twenty or thirty people had collected where Isen told them to. They didn’t talk to one another. They were waiting, as they’d been told.
Lily shook her head, more aware than usual that lupi might look human—but they weren’t. She headed for her witnesses, and had a small shock. One of those waiting so quietly was her sister Beth. Jason the hunk had his arm around her. Lily paused, absorbed that surprise, and asked, “Who’s Mike?”
“Me.” The man who spoke was the skinniest lupus she’d ever seen. Not emaciated, but stringy, and well over six feet tall. His hair was a dusty black, straight and shaggy, his skin a pale caramel. He looked sick.
“Last name?”
“Hemmings.”
“Okay. I need you to come with me, Mike.” But she didn’t move right away, instead glancing behind her.
Rule was coming. “You okay?” she whispered when he reached her.
He made a single brushing-away gesture. “You’re doing your job. In this case it’s my job, too. I’ll need to Change. I can probably tell even in this form if anyone lies, but we need better than ‘probably.’ ” He glanced around. “The food tables. If you want to question people separately, we’ll need some distance so the others won’t overhear.”
“Okay. Good idea. I need one of the guards to do the things I’d have a uniform do—fetch witnesses, mostly. Can you—”
“Of course.” He gestured to the nearest guard, who happened to be Shannon, the youthful-looking redhead, and told him he was needed to help Lily with the witnesses.
Then he pulled off his watch and tucked it in his jeans pocket. Then he Changed.
Lily had watched the Change often enough. She still couldn’t say precisely what she saw. Every time, she thought maybe this time she’d be able to really see the process, but she never did. Not quite.
It wasn’t like the way the movies depicted it, though—an arm sprouting fur and elongating into a leg, a face stretching into a muzzle. Nothing so clear and linear. Nor did she see the same thing a camera recorded. Rule had been caught on TV once when he Changed, and the space his body occupied had simply frizzed into visual static until he was wolf.
It didn’t help that Rule was extremely fast about the business, but her eyes couldn’t track it when she watched other lupi Change, either.
This time she tried watching out of the corner of her eye instead of head-on. Didn’t help. Reality folded itself up, space and flesh bending into places her brain couldn’t follow. Then it snapped back, and a wolf stood beside her. A really large wolf with black and silver fur.
Lily glanced at Cullen—then forced herself to think, dammit, think about what she could do, not what lay outside her scope and skills. She bent to pick up the cutoffs that had fallen from Rule when he put reality on hold, then nodded at Mike and Shannon.
“Let’s go over to the food tables. Shannon, I need my purse.” Her notebook was in it, for one thing. Also her weapon. “It’s in the kitchen at the Center, in the cupboard by the rear door. Can you get that pretty quick, then join us?”
He nodded and took her at her word. He ran. Since he went at lupus speed while they simply walked, he was on his way back before they reached the tables.
Potato salad. Coleslaw. An opened pack of buns. A spill of plastic forks. For some stupid reason the sight of all that made her eyes burn. She swallowed. Swallowed again. This shouldn’t have happened. Shouldn’t have happened at all, but especially not here, where Cullen was safe. Happy. He’d been so blasted happy, without his usual guards of cynicism and humor.
He couldn’t die. She hadn’t given him his baby present yet.
That thought nearly tipped her over, but Shannon arrived before she lost it. She got herself under control, took her bag, and dug out her notebook and a pen. She turned to face the gangly lupus.
Jittery, she decided. She didn’t have to smell him to know he was strung tight. “Mike, you okay? You look pretty tense.”
“Never mind making nice. Let’s get this over with.”
His hostility puzzled her. Sure, sometimes wits took out their anger on the cop questioning them, but this felt personal. “All right. First, I’d like to shake your hand.” No point in hiding what she intended. Everyone here knew she was a touch sensitive.
Mike’s palm was damp. No magic other than the familiar wash of lupus magic—cool, furry, with something that reminded her of the scent of pine needles, rendered tactilely.
She dropped his hand. “Thanks. Did you see who stabbed Cullen?”
His gaze darted to Rule, standing four-legged beside Lily. He nodded once.
“Tell me what you saw.”
He looked at the ground, his mouth tight. “I’ll tell my Rho.”
Rule didn’t move. He didn’t growl or snarl, yet all at once he was more. Not more of any one thing—just twice as present as before . He stared at Mike out of yellow eyes, hackles raised.
Mike’s head came up. He twitched as if fighting the need to abase himself, his gaze darting toward Rule, then dropping. “All right. All right, since you’ll have it this way, I’ll tell what I saw. I saw you, Rule. I saw you come up behind Cullen and slap him on the back. Then he fell, and I smelled his blood.”
SEVEN
LILY looked at Rule. It was automatic, unthinking. He’d been accused of an impossible and horrific act, of trying to kill his best friend. Of course she looked at him.
He dipped his head slowly in a nod.
It took a second for her brain to work past the confusion. He meant Yes, Mike’s telling the truth—but the truth as Mike knew it. Not the actual, factual truth, but what Mike believed.
Shit.
In the silence, Lily realized she’d been hearing the approaching whomp-whomp of a helicopter without it registering. She looked up and saw the copter’s running lights moving against the inky sky. It was close.
“Okay. Mike, you say you saw Rule. Did you smell him, too?”
He shook his head. “I didn’t notice his scent, but I wasn’t standing all that close.”
“Who was standing near you? Who did you see close to Cullen other than Rule?”
He named seven people, including Cynna and the woman who’d spoken earlier—Sandra, last name Metlock. She jotted them down, then turned the page. “Give me a picture of where they were. Here’s Cullen.” She drew a small circle. “Where were you? Cynna?” She led him through the placement of seven circles, then wrote his name at the top of the page. “One more question. Have you seen an Asian man here tonight?”
Mike blinked. “Sure. Your brother-in-law. Uh, sorry, but I don’t remember his name.”
“You’re sure he’s the only Asian man you’ve seen?”
“Pretty sure. He’s got a distinctive scent. No offense intended.”
“None taken.” Though she’d love to know what Paul smelled like to a lupus. She closed her pad. “Okay. That’s it for now.”
“Wait a minute. Aren’t you going to—”
“I’m going to ask a lot of people questions. Shannon, escort Mike back. I want him to stay near Isen.” That should reinforce the order not to talk. “Bring back . . . No, wait. I’m heading back there, too. Rule, I need you two-footed.”
His hackles lifted. He shook his head.
“Don’t pull that mantle crap on me.” But dammit, he’d guessed what she meant. Or part of it. She went to one knee in front of him, putting them eye to eye, and gripped his ruff. “I know better,” she said fiercely. “You can’t think I suspect you, even for a second. But you can’t help me question witnesses, either. Not when you’re implicated. It would taint the investigation and I’d be pulled, and then I wouldn’t be any help.”
He shook his head again.
Damned stubborn wolf. “You need to go with Cullen, anyway.” The sound of the copter was loud now. “Or not with him—the copter won’t have room for you or Cynna. But you can drive her to whatever hospital they’re taking him. She’s going to need you, Rule.”
He didn’t shake his head this time, but he didn’t Change, either.
“I’ll get Isen to question wits with me. He’s got most of the mantle, right? If you can scent a lie, so can he.”
Rule made a huffing noise. It might have been a lupine laugh, or sheer disbelief.
“He’ll do it,” she told him. “I’ll see to it. Now, get yourself two-footed so I can ask you a couple questions, and so you can drive at your best bat-out-of-hell speed to the hospital.”
“A Rho does not act as Lu Nuncio.” Isen’s face, usually so mobile, was stone. “I do not interrogate my people.”
The whomp-whomp of helicopter blades was distant once more. They’d loaded Cullen aboard—still breathing—and found room for Nettie. Cynna was heading with Rule to his car. Someone had loaned him a T-shirt to wear with his cutoffs.
“A Rho does what his people need him to do,” Lily said, and bent to slip off her shoes.
She’d check out the area where the perp must have stood to strike Cullen from behind.
It was much darker now, with only a thin scattering of mage lights overhead. Most of the cheery little balls had come from Cynna and Cullen. Still, a few remained. Lupi, with the exception of Cullen, didn’t perform magic; they were magic. But their female children were sometimes Gifted, and a handful had learned the new spell that produced mage lights.
At Lily’s request, most of those bobbing lights were concentrated where she stood now, facing Rule’s father. She straightened with her shoes in one hand. “You won’t question them. I will. You’ll tell me if they’re lying.”
“You misunderstand. The clan is accustomed to their Rho acting as judge, not as a policeman. You might be asking the questions, but if I’m present, they’ll believe they are being judged.”
“I’d say that it’s up to you to handle that.”
“I am. I’ll send Shannon to retrieve my Lu Nuncio—who knows better than to leave at this time.”
“Fine. I won’t be needing Rule, however, nor will he be allowed to question anyone on his own, since I’m being forced to hand this case over to the local cops.”
“Almost,” he said thoughtfully, “I could believe you are threatening me.”
“I’m giving you facts. You want me to conduct the investigation. Rule can’t participate in questioning witnesses when he’s been implicated by one of the witnesses. If I let him do that, any information I get will be tainted, and I’ll be pulled off the investigation.”
“Your superior is Ruben Brooks. He has confidence in you, and he’s shorthanded. Very few could take over the investigation.”
“Which is why the case will land with the locals if I don’t claim it. At this point, there’s a vague suggestion that magic could be involved. There’s no compelling evidence of it.”
“Compelling.” Isen repeated that one word, then said nothing more, his expression revealing little more than a certain intensity of interest.
Lily recognized the tactic, having used it often enough herself. If you leave a large, blank space in an interview or a negotiation, most people will rush to fill it. Especially if you watch them while you wait.
