Her phone beeped, signaling a text message. She stopped, scowling at the phone sitting beside the demon-eyed clock, and hated the way hope made her heart lift. And hurried to check the message.
Gone running, the little bubble read. Wolf needs it. Back late. Eat without me. The last sentence pricked her into looking above it at the date/time stamp: SEP 23 7:44 P.M.
She sagged onto the bed. He’d sent the text hours ago, just after he left the hospital. For whatever reason, it had taken its sweet time arriving. Could be a problem with AT&T; could be the kind of glitch common to cell service in areas that lacked a resident dragon to soak up excess magic. Either way, it could explain why she hadn’t been able to reach him.
Lily looked at the phone in her hand. She knew what she needed to do. She didn’t want to. Some weird twist of pride and guilt made it hard to admit she had no idea what had really happened this afternoon. Just how big a deal was it for a Rho to refuse a “kill me” request from one of his clan?
When you don’t have enough information, you go looking for it. She knew who to ask.
“It’s about time you called,” Cullen Seabourne snapped.
Lily looked at her phone, bewildered. “What?”
“About Ruben. That is why you called, isn’t it?”
More guilt. Cullen had gotten to know Ruben fairly well when he, Cynna, and Ruben had been transported to Edge. “It probably should be, but it isn’t. I didn’t realize you’d heard.”
“It’s on the damn news. ‘Ruben Brooks, head of the secretive Unit Twelve of the FBI, was taken to Walter Reed today—’ and blah, blah, blah. Nothing about what happened or how he’s doing, and when I called, no one would talk to me.”
Briefly she told him about the heart attack and Nettie’s intervention. “This healer is at the hospital now,” she finished, “but I don’t have any word on whether he’s been able to help.”
“If Nettie says he’s good, he’s good.” The snap had left Cullen’s voice, replaced by curiosity. “Why did you call?”
“I need advice.”
“You know my rates.”
Cullen had recently increased his consultation fee. As a soon-to-be-dad, he’d decided he needed more income. As the only known sorcerer in the country, he could get away with charging sky-high fees. Fortunately, he was married to an FBI agent, who’d insisted he keep his fees reasonable when he worked for the Bureau.
“This is personal, not professional.”
Dead silence, followed by a wicked chuckle. “Well, my personal best is nine times, but that was a special situation, and I’d just as soon you didn’t mention it to Cynna. She wasn’t one of the participants, and I hate to set up expectations I might not be able to—”
“Okay, okay, you’ve made your obligatory sexual comment.” But Lily smiled as she said it. It was perverse, but the sheer predictability of Cullen’s response unwound some of the tightness. She rolled her shoulders, trying to dispel more of it. “I don’t know if it’s really advice I need, or just information. It has to do with clan expectations and a Rho’s obligations.”
“I’m not sure I’m the one to talk to.” Cullen was uncharacteristically cautious. “You might do better to ask Isen.”
“I think Rule wouldn’t be happy if I did that. It’s, ah, I guess it’s Leidolf business, so maybe I shouldn’t talk to the Nokolai Rho about it.”
“Maybe not.” Cullen paused. “I’m Nokolai.”
“So am I. This isn’t a deep, dark clan secret. I just think Rule would rather I asked you than pretty much anyone else, but I need your promise not to repeat what I tell you.”
“Too general. I can promise I won’t speak of it to anyone unless my Rho asks me directly, or I consider the need to reveal it both pressing and urgent. If it’s pressing but not urgent, I’ll let you know before I speak.”
Lily grimaced. She’d forgotten how meticulous lupi were with promises … which meant there was a difference between “I can promise” and “I do promise.” “That should work. So do you promise?”
He chuckled low in his throat. “You’ve a devious mind, don’t you?”
“I’ve been around Sam more lately.”
“That would do it. Yes. I promise, as stipulated. There’s a reason you can’t talk to Rule about this?”
“He isn’t here. That’s the problem, or maybe it’s a symptom of the problem, and I need your help to understand the real problem.”
“Since you aren’t making sense, I’d better hear the rest of it.”
She told him. Pretending she was making a report helped; she gave him the conversation with Cobb as close to verbatim as possible. She’d gotten to the part when Rule abruptly stood up when Cullen let out a low whistle. “Rule turned down Cobb’s request?”
Her heart sank. “Not exactly. He said he wasn’t refusing, but he had to delay granting the request. This is a big deal, then?”
“Lily.” Her name sounded heavy, weighted with frustration and something else. Worry, maybe. “Given any choice at all, we do not surrender clan to imprisonment.”
“No, mostly you just kill the perp yourselves, if you’re sure he’s guilty.” That bugged the hell out of her. “The last time a lupus was clearly guilty of killing a human—I’m not counting that self-defense case in Louisiana—his clan delivered his body to the courthouse.” Her voice soured. “He was in wolf form, so killing him was legal.”
“You don’t understand. If the human world requires that one of us be punished for a real or imagined crime, the Rho may choose to requite the offense with the death of the transgressor. But it’s more likely that the transgressor will ask that of his Rho—a quick death rather than the long insanity of living in a cage. The Rho always grants that request. Always.”
“It’s a big fucking deal, then.”
“Yeah. It is.”
“But Rule delayed granting Cobb’s request. He didn’t refuse outright.”
He was silent a moment. “I don’t know what that means. If he believed Cobb didn’t deserve an honorable death, he’d grant the request but have someone else handle the kill. He wouldn’t delay granting the request, though. That’s not what we do. The whole situation is peculiar, though. Rhos don’t visit a jailed clansman—mostly because until recently they haven’t been public about who they are. That’s changing, but …” His voice trailed off.
Lily could almost hear Cullen scowling in the silence that followed. She remembered how grateful, how glad, Cobb had been to see Rule. He hadn’t expected his Rho to come to him. He hadn’t thought he’d have the chance to ask for the one mercy his Rho was obligated to grant. “Does the clansman have to make his request in person? He can’t pass it along through someone else?”
“Normally he does, but the granting of the request … this gets complicated. Like I said, the request is always granted, but the Rho may not carry it out himself. If he does, it’s an honorable death. If he has someone else handle the kill, it’s a dishonorable death. Sometimes, though, a Rho can’t grant final mercy personally. Maybe he’d have to travel to do so, and that isn’t safe. Or maybe he’s wounded, or the clansman is already in jail. There are plenty of reasons he might have to delegate the act. There’s a ritual, a way he can pass that duty to another of the clan, so that the death remains honorable even though the Rho didn’t grant it personally.”
An honorable death. Lily knew that was important to lupi, even if she couldn’t see the honor in having your leader kill you. “So even if Rule intended to have someone else kill Cobb, he wouldn’t have delayed granting the request.”
“I don’t understand what he did, but I know why. You do, too, don’t you?”
And here came the guilt. “Because of me.” She’d just been pulled from the case. Had he acted, the repercussions to her could have been huge. She sighed.