“Yet Dya acted against her contract already, didn’t she?” Rule said. “When she sent Arjenie with the, ah, undoer, surely that was a contract violation.”
“Dya thinks Friar’s broken something called Queens’ Law, which would invalidate the contract. It’s complicated, and no, I don’t know what this Queens’ Law is.”
“I can talk about that,” Arjenie said, leaning forward. “Not that I know much, but Eledan did teach me the basics. The sidhe have lots of rulers, but the two Queens are over them all. The Queens outlaw the seriously bad magical stuff: death magic, binders—um, that doesn’t mean regular binding spells, but something much worse—genocide, the two banned Names and the three banned Words … not that I know those names or those words. I don’t know what the last one means, either: interfering with the dead. Eledan shuddered when I asked and told me to wait until I was older.”
Isen and Rule exchanged a look. “Genocide,” Isen said thoughtfully.
“Very likely,” Rule agreed. “If Friar is working for her. She wants us dead.”
Arjenie shivered. “All of you? That’s … hugely bad.”
Lily agreed, but they needed to get back on topic. “The first thing we have to do is figure out how to get word of this to Croft or Karonski. Karonski’s heading the investigation into the attack on Ruben. He and Croft both need to know what we’ve learned, but we can’t call them. Not if Friar can potentially listen at their end. I’m not sure if e-mail is safe. If whoever tried for Ruben can—”
“No,” Benedict said, “the first thing we need to do is to make sure Dya is still there and okay. Then we can ask her if she’d come away with us once we secure her supply of these tears.” He looked at Isen. “I’m thinking Seabourne.”
Isen nodded. “Give him Danny for backup. He’s almost as fast and he knows the terrain well.”
Benedict turned to Arjenie. “Dya will need some reason to listen to Seabourne. Please give me your ring.”
Arjenie rolled her eyes. “That’s an order with ‘please’ tacked on, but at least you’re trying.” She pulled the ring off and handed it to him.
“Lily.” While Benedict gave Cullen instructions, Rule leaned close, his voice low. “I’m thinking of Raymond Cobb.”
“What? Oh. Oh, shit.” She rubbed her neck. She should have thought of that. “It’s possible, isn’t it? He was at a public party, drinking a Coke or something. It would have been simple enough for someone to dose him with a potion.”
“It would explain why he suddenly went insane. Why it looked and felt much like falling into the fury, but wasn’t.” His voice even softer, he added, “I’m wondering if Cobb was a test. A test of the dose and effectiveness.”
“Jesus.” She shivered. “If that’s what the potion Arjenie countered was supposed to do to every lupus at Clanhome … but how did they know he was lupus?”
“Friar keeps files on us. It’s one of the things he uses Humans First for—to assemble files on known and suspected lupi. Cobb only had to slip up once in front of the wrong person to give himself away.”
It made a horrible sort of sense. Friar would have wanted to try out his potion, see what it did. Why Cobb, out of all the lupi in the country? Maybe he was simply convenient. Maybe Friar had an agent in place in the city—like whoever had shot her—and Cobb hung out with humans often enough to make it easy to dose him.
Cullen shoved back from the table. “Got it,” he told Benedict and bent to give Cynna a quick kiss. “Don’t go into labor.”
“Yet,” she said. “You need to put ‘yet’ on the end of that sentence. I have every intention of going into labor, just not tonight.”
He grinned, ruffled her hair, and left.
“Now that the first thing’s been dealt with,” Lily said dryly, “let’s move on to the second thing. How do we let Croft know about Friar’s guest and her capabilities? E-mail’s safer than phone, but I’m not sure it’s safe enough. We don’t know who at the Bureau is a traitor. We don’t know if Friar has a means of hacking into the system, either. We may need to send someone to report in person.”
“Someone from the local FBI office?” Rule asked. “Or someone from Nokolai?”
Arjenie jumped in, her face lighting up. “I could do it. It wouldn’t look odd if I cut my vacation short by a couple days, not with everything that’s going on. It would have to be a written report, of course, but if you gave me a written report, I could deliver it.”
Lily hesitated. If she said no, Arjenie would think they were back to distrusting her. But she couldn’t go jetting across the country. Not without Benedict. Lily met the young woman’s eyes. “I’m not sure a written report is the best way to go.” And Benedict needs to tell you about the mate bond really, really soon.
Arjenie’s eyes widened. “Ohmygosh. That was so weird. What’s a mate bond?”
THIRTY-TWO
“I’M sorry,” Lily said helplessly. “Benedict, I didn’t mean to … I don’t know how I did that.”
“What’s going on?’ Arjenie looked from Lily to Benedict, then on to every other face at the table. Then back at Benedict again. His face was smoothed out, blank, but his eyes … storms swirled there. Her heart began to pound. “Everyone’s upset. Why is everyone upset?”
Benedict shoved to his feet. “Arjenie, will you come into the kitchen with me?”
“Now?” She blinked. “The kitchen?”
“Or we could go outside.”
He meant that they should be alone to talk about this. Her stomach turned queasy. She didn’t know why. “You’re scaring me.”
“That’s appropriate. I’m terrified.”
CARL’S kitchen was not going to need much cleaning, Arjenie thought as she looked around. There was a pot on the stove that probably held what was left of the chicken and dumplings. The two cookie sheets in the sink must have been for the scones.
She headed there. “Okay,” she said, turning on the water to get it hot. “Start talking.”
“You’re washing dishes?”
“I’m nervous. It’s easier to be nervous if I’m busy.”
“Arjenie.” He turned off the water and put his hands on her arms and turned her to face him. “I don’t think I can do this while you wash dishes.”
His face wasn’t all smoothed out anymore. She still couldn’t read it. He’d said he was terrified, but what she saw was urgency. She licked her lips. “Lily thinks you need to tell me about the mate bond really soon. Soon would be now.”
“You know that my people do not believe in marriage or monogamy.”
This was not the lead-in she’d expected. She nodded.
“There is one exception. Rarely—very rarely—our Lady gifts one of us with a Chosen. We call her that because she is chosen for us. A lupus gifted with a Chosen will be faithful to her unto death.”
Disappointment swamped her. “Is that why Rule and Lily are getting married? Not because they love each other, but because they’ve got this mate bond thing? And Cullen and Cynna, too—”
“Cullen and Cynna don’t share a mate bond. Rule and Lily do. They also love each other. I don’t understand why they’re marrying. It’s a meaningless flourish when they are irrevocably bound together. It will cause no end of problems.”
Irrevocably? Her heart was pounding harder. “I don’t understand. I don’t see why Lily wanted you to tell me this. If she was worried that … well, I guess it’s obvious I’m attracted to you, but if she or you are thinking I don’t understand how lupi are about sex, that I’m going to get my feelings hurt because you aren’t going to make a commitment—”