It could have been Rule running beside her instead of LeBron.
She saw it again—the bloody wreck where LeBron’s eye had been, flesh and bone and brains blenderized by gunpowder and velocity, his other eye smeared with the placid scum of death.
Fear twisted sickly, a whole-body knife dragging disgust and weakness in its wake. Lily leaned against the vanity, closing her eyes as she swung between shame and terror and faced the thing she hadn’t wanted to know: that she was glad. Glad it had been LeBron with her on the sidewalk. Glad it was him who’d died, and not Rule.
It could so easily have been Rule. Might be him tomorrow or the next day. Or Cullen or Cynna, her sisters, Toby, her parents, Isen, Nettie … she shuddered.
Funny. She’d thought death held no terror for her. But that was terror twisting her up right now, and it was all about death … from the other side. The side of the one left behind, the one who couldn’t keep death from taking those she loved.
There’d been nothing she could have done to save LeBron. Nothing short of omniscience, and God knew she was short on that. And the wrongness in her, the weakness in her gut, blood, and bones, came from the certain knowledge that it could happen again. If not through a bullet, then through lightning, car crash, cancer, any of the freakish fits of fate and mortality.
She couldn’t protect them all. She wasn’t in charge of who lived and who died. She didn’t think anyone was. And it didn’t help, it didn’t help at all, that she’d figured out why Isen believed she was actively moving against the lupi once more. Lily thought he might be right. Probably was right, if what Arjenie said about Friar being unable to Listen in at Clanhome was true.
How did she set that aside and go on as if she could count on having those she loved and needed with her tomorrow and tomorrow?
She used to know. Only three days ago, she’d known how to move through the day without gasping like a landed trout, terrified for those she loved. She couldn’t remember how to do that.
Lily took a slow breath. All she could do was act, then. Act as if she could protect them, or they could protect themselves, or somehow fate would be kind. Act as if her heart wasn’t pounding and pounding right now. As if she had the courage to risk them, because what choice did she have?
To risk Rule.
It could have been him.
Her head clear, her hands icy, Lily left the bathroom. She got in the wheelchair Rule had waiting for her and let him push her forward, since everyone was convinced she couldn’t walk on her own.
They were right, weren’t they?
TWENTY-NINE
LAUGHTER is not musical. Music is, by definition, an art form; real laughter is artless, unconstructed. Nor does laughter have the musical quality of some natural sounds—the rhythmic wash of waves, the patter of rain, or the hoot of an owl. It’s contagious and appealing, but it’s not music.
When Rule wheeled Lily into the great room, Arjenie was laughing, her head tipped back as if to open her throat better to let the laughter out. And it sounded musical.
Lily had noticed that before. Even over the phone, Arjenie’s laugh had made Lily think of clichés about bells. She just hadn’t associated it with the sidhe. Why would she? Sure, like a lot of six-graders, she’d been forced to memorize that stupid poem by Keats or Shelley or someone with the famous lines about elven laughter:
… a quiet music haunts my sleep
nor rain, nor wind, nor night, were night to speak—
yet a crescent moon, or a stag mid-leap
a chuckle of clouds, the converse of blades
recall the laughter of the elven maids.
Huh. She actually remembered that bit. Point to Mrs. Mc-Cutcheon. The thing was, she’d never associated the poem with anything real, maybe because she’d never heard an elf laugh.
Only it turned out she had, and hadn’t known it.
Isen and Nettie were at the rear of the room, seated on one of the big couches. Arjenie was curled up in an armchair near it. Isen rose when he saw her. “Lily.” He was delighted. “You’re feeling better.”
“And you’re in the damn wheelchair,” Nettie said, amused. “Good for you.” She stood, too.
Lily grimaced. “Rule persuaded me that was a better thank-you than flowers. Whatever you did this last time, it seems to have worked.”
“I put you in sleep, that’s all.” Nettie came to them and crouched. “That’s all I can do with you. Your Gift doesn’t let me in.” She took Lily’s hand, turned it up, and laid her fingers on the pulse at the wrist.
Lily understood why Nettie couldn’t heal her directly the way she could one of the lupi. Lily’s Gift blocked magic, period—even the good sort. What she didn’t understand was why Nettie could put her in sleep, or how that worked. Nettie said in sleep let her body do its own healing, only faster and more fully than it could on its own. This had something to do with the difference between magical and spiritual energies. According to Nettie, the “in sleep” trick was a spiritual practice, not a magical one, so it wasn’t blocked by Lily’s Gift. That’s also why Lily had to give permission before Nettie put her in sleep.
Lily could repeat this explanation. She knew from experience it was true—spiritual energy did affect her. She just had no idea what that meant.
“Good news,” Nettie said, releasing Lily’s hand. “You’re alive.”
“Always nice to have a hunch confirmed. Can I get out of the chair now?”
“No.” Nettie patted her shoulder. “But if you’re good, I’ll give you a cookie.”
“You’re enjoying this way too much.”
Nettie had a lovely smile when she used it. “I take my moments where I find them. You should be glad I’m not insisting on bed rest.”
Lily shuddered. “Oh, I am. Trust me.”
Cynna, Cullen, and Benedict were sitting around the patio-sized dining table at the other end of the room. It was getting louder down there. “… no friggin’ way you can equate the Etruscan kah to the Raetic ktah!” Cullen said. “The similarity of sound has nothing to do with their runic function, which you ought to—”
“And you,” Cynna said, pushing to her feet, “have a sadly simplistic grasp of runic magic. Plus you don’t listen. I didn’t say they were identical. I said the kah could be replaced by the ktah in that particular spell to increase congruity. Clearly you’d have to rework the placement.”
“Placement.” Cullen’s brows snapped together. He looked down at the table, muttering under his breath, and began sketching with one finger … a finger that left a glowing line behind. “Right. Higher, you mean? In the line invoking Air?”
“You’re the one who can see magic. You figure it out.” The words were curt. The look on Cynna’s face was fond, amused. She scrubbed a hand from the base of Cullen’s skull to the crown, making his hair stand up.
“Hey!” He looked up, grinned, and grabbed her hand, then tickled her palm with one finger. Lily couldn’t hear his murmured words, but she saw the wicked look he gave his wife.
She grinned back. “Later, you romantic fool.” She withdrew her hand and started toward the rest of them. “Hey, Lily. You look like crap.”
“Gee, thanks.”
“It’s almost like you’d been shot and then operated on and then insisted on flying across the country.”