Mortal Ties

by Eileen Wilks

“Yeah, I’ve seen the pictures. She’s kind of…shit. You don’t mean—”

  “I’m afraid so. Last week, I heard from some flunky in the State Department. Benessarai An’Cholai expressed an interest in seeing a demonstration of my prototype. We’re supposed to meet on January second.”

  Shit, shit, shit. “Don’t tell me this Beness-whatever is a sidhe lord.”

  “Ben-ESS-er-aye. Accent on the second syllable.”

  “Benessarai,” she repeated impatiently. “Is he a sidhe lord?”

  “He’s certainly sidhe—an elf—but not a lord. Or so the flunky said.”

  “Would he be able to see magic the way you do? Some sidhe do, right? And how did he even hear about your prototype?’

  “Excellent questions, and when you find the answers I hope you’ll share them with me.”

  SEVENTEEN

  THE addition of the sidhe—any sidhe—to the mix changed things considerably. Lily called Ruben with the news on the way to the airport. She put her phone on speaker. No point in pretending it was a private conversation. Not with lupi hearing.

  Ruben made an ah sound of satisfaction. “There’s a connection,” he said definitely. “I don’t know what, but one or more of our visiting sidhe are connected to this theft. Your investigation is suddenly more important, Lily, but also a good deal trickier. There are political ramifications—you’ll let me worry about those—and the trade delegation has been granted temporary diplomatic immunity.”

  Lily grimaced. “So I can’t arrest them even if they are guilty as hell.”

  “The connection might be innocent. I don’t at the moment see how, but that doesn’t negate the possibility. For now, focus on finding out who’s involved and why they wanted the prototype and let me worry about how to make an arrest, if one is warranted. I have a feeling the ‘why’ will prove important. Oh, and ask Mr. Seabourne to please keep that appointment. I’d very much like to know why Benessarai is interested enough in the prototype to fly across the country.”

  Cullen twisted around in his seat—his was sitting up front—and snorted. “So would I. The sidhe know how to make real artifacts. I’d also like to know how he heard about the prototype in the first place. Learning anything will be a real trick, of course, given the way the sidhe are about information. They consider secrecy an art form. Literally.” Cullen sighed. “Of course, Benessarai may not show up now, especially if he was just wanting a chuckle at the barbarian’s crude little device.”

  Lily asked Ruben if he’d heard all that. Assured that he’d caught most of it, she said, “I can’t see this elf guy crossing the country just to laugh at your prototype.”

  Cullen shook his head. “Elves are not human. They don’t organize life the way we do—and by ‘we’ I mean lupi as well as humans, because we both sort the world into good and evil. Elves don’t. On a fundamental level, they just don’t. Their highest value is dtha, which roughly translated means knowledge and beauty, which they don’t consider separate constructs, but more like two shades of the same color, or two lenses in a pair of glasses. Amusement is part of dtha. And no, I don’t understand why, but it is, and it matters to them in ways that seem frivolous or absurd to us. You know that sidhe lord I met when he came here on walkabout?”

  “You’ve told me about him.”

  “He violated an important ban to come to our realm. He left his land, his people, and sundered himself from a vast amount of power—he was a sidhe lord, remember, with the land-tie and all that implies. And he did all that because he thought it would be amusing.”

  “If elves are so secretive, how did you learn so much from him?”

  “We made a deal. I can’t tell you about what. That’s part of the terms of the deal.”

  Lily thought about that a moment. “And was he amused by his visit?”

  Cullen looked surprised, then grinned. “I asked him that myself. He said he was.”

  Lily glanced at Rule, sitting beside her. He hadn’t said one word since she punched in Ruben’s number. He seemed to be listening, but in an abstracted way. “I need to know whatever you’ve got about Benessarai and the other delegates,” she told Ruben.

  “I’ll have Ida send you the file. It’s quite slim, unfortunately. We do know that none of them are from Rethna’s realm—at least, the realm they claim to represent isn’t the one he came from. Arjenie tentatively confirms that, based on conversations with three of them. I’ll call both her and State and see what they can tell me that isn’t in the file.”

  “Okay.” She hesitated, then, watching Rule, said, “About Jasper Machek…do I have the authority to make a deal with him if it leads us to whoever hired him to steal the device?” She’d told Ruben who Jasper Machek was. She’d had to. Rule hadn’t objected. He hadn’t really reacted at all.

  “Are you certain you can separate your connection to him from the needs of the investigation?”

  Lily considered several answers. She settled for a simple “no.”

  “That’s honest, at any rate. I think you’d best tell him you can offer only a provisional agreement, which I’ll have to approve.”

  That was better than she’d feared. She thanked Ruben and disconnected. “Are you okay with that?’ she asked Rule.

  He smiled. It didn’t touch his eyes. “Fine. I’d rather Machek isn’t arrested. Imprisonment wouldn’t affect him the way it would one of my people, but I’m unable to see it as a decent sort of deterrent or punishment.”

  But Machek is one of your people, she wanted to say. From the human side of your family. Instead she took his hand and kept silent and wondered if she was being wise or really, deeply foolish.

  *

  LILY hadn’t visited San Francisco in years. The city hadn’t had any major magic-related crimes since she switched from local law enforcement to the federal variety, and before that…well, she and Cody used to come up here when they could both get time off. She figured it was normal to avoid a place loaded with memories after a bad breakup.

  She did wonder, as their plane circled SFO, what kind of memories the city held for Rule. If she asked, he’d tell her, but then he’d get to ask her the same thing. She thought about that and decided it was okay. He knew about Cody, after all. But she’d ask later, when they were alone. Surely they’d be alone again sometime.

  They did not leave the airport in Rule’s usual choice of cars. His brother had told him to stop being so damn predictable, so he’d been tricky instead. He’d reserved a Mercedes, but changed it to a BMW at the rental desk. Scott drove. Hungry lupi were not focused lupi, so they picked up hamburgers and ate them as they wound up and down, through and around.

  They were stopped at a light on Market Street when Rule got a call from Mike, who was holding down the fort at the hotel where they’d stay. “Already? But he hasn’t had time to go to Clanhome, much less…” A longish pause. “Hmm. Welcome him for me, then, and feed him. Tell him it will be at least an hour before I can be there to accept and could be longer, but the delay is one of necessity, not disrespect.” He disconnected and looked at Lily. “Isen is being unconventional again. The new Laban Rho just arrived at the hotel looking for us. He brought one of the Laban counselors to act as witness.”

  “Witness for what?”

  “Isen told him I would accept his submission on Nokolai’s behalf.”

  “Is that kosher?”

  “Oh, yes. It’s been done in the past, when circumstances didn’t permit the usual ceremony and witnesses.” He glanced at the back of Scott’s head.

  Lily understood that she wasn’t supposed to ask what in the world Isen was up to, not within Scott’s hearing. She didn’t, but she wondered really hard.

  They ended up on a horizontally challenged street in a neighborhood that was nothing like the kind of places where she’d hung out with Cody. It was an older area, but older in the pricey way, the kind of street where people sacrificed parking for charm and period details. Parked cars lined the curbs. Scott was lucky to find a spot two
and a half blocks from their goal.

  It was at least ten degrees colder here than back in San Diego. Lily was glad for her jacket and the brisk walk to keep her blood moving. She suspected Rule didn’t notice. Preoccupied was one way to describe him. Silent was another. Scared, she suspected, would also fit, though he might not know it.

  At the corner nearest Machek’s home, they stopped. Tall, narrow Victorians with shared walls crowded the sidewalk on one side of the street. On this side the houses were a different style, identical aside from paint and whatever landscaping their owners had chosen for the pocket-size front yards. Each had a single-car garage at street level flanked by a long staircase leading to the second-floor entry; the stairs would make a claustrophobe uncomfortable, she thought with a glance at Rule, being closed in by walls on both sides. Wide bow windows arced out over the garages. “It’s the blue one in the middle of the block, right?”

  “Yes.” Rule glanced at Scott. “Disposition?”

  “Chris on the roof,” Scott said. “Alan and Todd are on the adjoining roofs. The rest are patrolling.”

  That much Lily could see for herself. Barnaby and Steve were chatting across the street from Jasper Machek’s house. Joe was with them, investigating a lamppost. Joe wore a harness and a leash and wagged his tail at a passing Pomeranian yapping at the end of its leash, but Joe did not look like a dog. He looked like a wolf trying to impersonate a dog. “You really think no one will guess what he is?”

  “We’ve taken Joe for walks all over the place,” Scott said. “No one raises an eyebrow. People see what they expect to see. It helps that Joe’s wolf is smaller than most.”

  Small for a lupus, yeah. Or for a Great Dane. Outsize for pretty much anything else, but Scott seemed to be right. The woman at the other end of the Pomeranian’s leash was more interested in checking out Barnaby and Steve than in their large but well-behaved dog.

  Okay, time to call on the other member of their little force, if she was going to do it. Lily took a deep breath and did. “Drummond.”

  “What the hell—is he here?” Rule scowled.

  “He is now.” The misty form in front of her gradually coalesced into a lanky man with a receding hairline and a smirk. “What have you heard? What do you know?”

  “Don’t know much.” Drummond’s mouth moved as if he was pushing words out the usual way. She tried to spot some difference between this and regular speech, but couldn’t. “I heard what you said at the airport and on the plane. You’re going to make a deal with someone named Machek, but it could be a trap.”

  She nodded. “That’s enough for now. You still want to help?”

  “Lily,” Rule said, “this is not a good idea.”

  She glanced at him. “If Drummond’s still playing for the other team and this is an ambush, he’ll either encourage us to walk into a trap or he’ll try to buy our trust by giving up the bad guys. In the first case, we’re going in anyway. In the second, we get a warning. How do we lose?”

  “You forgot the third possibility,” Drummond said sourly. “The one where I’m doing the right thing.”

  “I covered that with the first ‘if.’ ”

  Rule did not look as if he agreed, but he didn’t object out loud. Cullen was looking from Lily to the place where Drummond stood. Or hovered. Whatever. He muttered something and made a gesture.

  Drummond turned to glare at him. “Shit! Tell your spooky friend not to do that. It itches.”

  “You’re calling him spooky?” Lily looked at Cullen. “What did you do? Drummond said it made him itch.”

  “Variant on a Find spell. Checking for ghosts.” He grinned. “It worked.”

  “You couldn’t just take my word for it?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind.” She looked at Drummond. “You willing to check out that blue house in the middle of the block? Number 1129. Jasper Machek should be inside. He’s fifty-three, six-one, around one-fifty-five, dark hair and eyes. We need to know if anyone else is with him.”

  “Should be within my range, but just barely. Don’t go wandering off.” With that he evaporated, or mostly. A wispy trace zipped off down the sidewalk.

  “It’s so weird that you can’t see or hear him,” Lily said.

  “Maybe I can make it so I can,” Cullen said. “It will take some tweaking, but if my Find spell works for him, I should be able to make him visible. At least briefly, and to me,” he added. “And it won’t help with hearing.”

  “Aren’t ghosts connected to spirit?” Wiccan doctrine claimed there were five elements—air, earth, fire, water, and spirit. Spirit was different from the other four. Fire, earth, air, and water were types of magic, but spirit was something else or other or more. Lily didn’t know what, and no one had been able to define it for her, but that “something else” quality was why she could see and hear Drummond. Her Gift didn’t block spirit. “I thought your kind of magic didn’t work on spirit.”

  “It doesn’t, but if I…do you really want me to explain?”

  “Now that you mention it—no.”

  “Lily.”

  She looked at Rule, who was staring down the sidewalk, an odd expression on his face. “What?”

  “I saw it. Him. For a minute it looked like a bit of fog moving down the sidewalk.”

  “That’s almost weirder than you not seeing him.”

  “It has to be the mate bond, doesn’t it? Somehow it let me share what you see, in a limited way. It hasn’t done anything like that in a long time.”

  Not since they were captured by the Great Bitch’s agents, in fact. “The bond was new then. I thought that was why our abilities sort of slopped over onto each other for a while.”

  “The newness made it possible. The Lady made it happen. Why would the Lady want me able to see Drummond?” He frowned. “I think you need to talk with the Etorri Rhej again.”

  “I just did. What could I ask her that I haven’t already?”

  “It’s more what you’d tell her. Drummond says he can’t manifest at Clanhome. That’s what you told me, isn’t it? It makes me wonder if he’s contaminated by her. If he’s the Great Bitch’s agent, being at Clanhome might inhibit what he can do.”

  “Wouldn’t your father know if he were?” If someone contaminated by her power crossed onto Clanhome, the mantle would alert Isen. At least that was how it was supposed to work.

  “Does that apply to a ghost? I don’t know. Do you?”

  If he didn’t, she sure as hell had no clue. “I guess I should call her. But not,” she said with a glance up the street, “right now.” A pale mist wafted quickly back down the sidewalk toward them. She waited until it reached them to say, “That was quick.”

  The fog shaped itself into Drummond’s too-familiar form. “Doesn’t take long if I’m just counting live bodies. You glow.”

  “Who does? What do you mean?”

  “All you embodied types. From this side, you’ve got a glow. I don’t have to manifest to see it.”

  “Huh.”

  “Machek’s there, or someone who matches his description. No one else, except for the cats. Two of them.”

  “They glow, too?”

  He grimaced. “They’ve got bodies, so…yeah.”

  She glanced at Rule. “He says Machek’s inside with two cats. No one else.”

  Rule cast a hard look in Drummond’s general direction. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  RULE didn’t feel sick. Maybe his stomach felt like he’d swallowed rocks, but that was not the same as feeling sick. He was tense, yes. His muscles were tight in a way that would interfere with quick action, if such were needed, so as he climbed the stairs he went through a quick relaxation routine…again.

  Why was he reacting this way? He didn’t understand. He wished he would stop.

  There was a narrow porch at the top of the stairs, overhung by the roof. The door was stained rather than painted, the wood mellow with age and sheened by a recent cleaning with mineral oil, judging by the faint scent. Lily stood to his
right, Cullen to his left and slightly behind. Scott had his back. Lily had her weapon out.

  Rule pressed the doorbell.

  Footsteps on a wooden floor. The door opened. Rule looked into his own eyes.

  “Rule Turner,” the man with his eyes said. His gaze drifted to Lily, snagged for a second on her gun. First his eyebrows shot up, then his mouth kicked up…a mouth not shaped like Rule’s. It was wider, with a mobile flex that spoke of easy smiles. “And company. More company than I was expecting, but come in, all of you.” He opened the door wide, then wandered away, apparently trusting them to follow.

  Rule did, with Lily right behind him. Then Cullen, then Scott, who closed the door their host had apparently lost interest in.

  The entry hall was small, dominated by a huge abstract painting—mostly orange, with geometric shapes dancing across it in a way that suggested fire. Beside the bit of wall that held the painting was a staircase; otherwise the entry was open to the living room on the left. That was eclectically furnished, with tables in both old wood and polished steel; African masks, ink drawings, and framed posters on taupe walls; an old church pew and two wing chairs grouped with a cream-colored contemporary sofa.

  Jasper plopped down in one of the wing chairs and gestured at the sofa. His hair was the same color as Rule’s, but curly. And graying. “Come in and sit, and perhaps you’d like to put that gun away?” The last was accompanied by a roguish waggle of his eyebrows, as if he invited Lily to some faintly wicked act.

  “We’ll see,” she said pleasantly as she and Rule entered the room trailing Cullen and Scott. “You’re Jasper Machek?”

  “And you’re Lily Yu.” That wide mouth stretched in an attractive smile. “I’ve seen you interviewed. You’re even lovelier in person, I must say, than on TV. But I don’t know the two gentlemen with you who are not Rule Turner.”

  “Cullen Seabourne and Scott White.”

  “Seabourne.” Machek’s eyebrows lifted. “How awkward, yet how convenient.”

  Cullen answered him coolly. “Is it, now?”

  Machek didn’t respond, apparently fascinated by the sight of Cullen. Rule glanced around the large room. Someone had poured quite a bit of money into the house, gutting this floor to create the kind of open floor plan beloved of designers these days. At one end, the big bay window held a cluttered roll-top desk, its top open. A pile of fur slept on top of an assortment of papers there…a cat, actually, but Rule wouldn’t have known that if not for his nose. Couch, church pew, and chairs in the middle. Dining at the far end, with the kitchen around the corner.