“Hmm.” Isen was thoughtful. “So Benedict was vulnerable to what happened to Arjenie because of the mate bond, not in spite of it.”
“I’m just guessing, but yeah.”
He turned to Arjenie and spoke gently. “Arjenie, what do you want to do?”
She blinked. “I’m sorry?”
“You’ve had a difficult experience. Do you need a sedative or some privacy to think or meditate?”
“You don’t want me to hear what you’re planning?”
“I need your help in another way, if you’re able to offer it. We need to know more about what Friar built underground. Specifically, there has to be a back door. People have left through his house who didn’t come in through his house. I’m hoping you can find it.”
Arjenie bit her lip, then thrust her hand out to Lily.
Lily took it—winced, and let go. “You’re shouting.”
“Sorry. I get anxious and try too hard, and … please.”
Lily tried again. Arjenie may have been trying to think in clear sentences, but she was too agitated. Her thoughts tumbled over each other so quickly it took Lily a moment to sort out what Arjenie desperately wanted to say. “Isen, she wants you to promise you’ll rescue Dya, too, which means you have to get the tears for her. Arjenie can’t tell you what they look like, but Dya will be able to. She thinks Dya will be willing to leave now. Ah … she thinks Dya refused to leave earlier out of fear for her—Dya didn’t think Arjenie could get the tears without being caught—and because Brian needed her. That he needed the healing potions she made.”
Isen nodded. “I can’t promise results. I can promise we will try as hard to retrieve Dya and the tears as we would to reclaim one of our own.”
“I wasn’t asked to promise,” Lily added, “but there’s no way I’m leaving Dya there.”
Arjenie sighed in relief and let go of Lily’s hand. “I’ll do anything I can to help. I don’t know what more I can find, but I’ll do my best.” Her mouth twitched into a quick smile, there-and-gone. “Research will settle me better than meditation, so I’ll get started right away.” She pushed her chair back and darted a glance at Benedict, sleeping peacefully on a couch at the other end of the long room … with a .38 trained on him. “What’s going to happen with him?”
Isen answered. “Lily will keep checking. Once the potion is out of his system, we’ll let him wake. After that, we’ll see what kind of shape he’s in.”
Emotions flitted over her face in a cascade too quick and jumbled to read. Lily wondered if she smelled as confused and unhappy as she looked. She left without saying anything more.
Rule leaned closer to say, low-voiced, “You weren’t asked to promise because there is no way you are taking part in this rescue.”
“Arjenie made an assumption. You are, too.”
“You’re wounded, unable to fight, and we are not going in legally. You can’t be part of it.”
Lily had thought this through on the way here. She knew she had a tough sales job ahead—but Rule wasn’t the one she most needed to convince. “Until recently, the law hurt and hindered lupi instead of offering the protection it’s supposed to provide. You’re accustomed to working around it or outside it.” She looked at Rule, Cullen, the Rhej, Isen. “That’s your default. Go in, get it done, don’t get caught. If Friar were the only enemy involved, that might work. But he isn’t.”
“If you’re planning to arrest Her Bitchness,” Cullen said dryly, “I’m going to think it was you instead of me who got knocked in the head.”
“Think about who her agent is. Robert Friar is determined to rouse public opinion against lupi. That’s been her theme, too. When she first moved against lupi last year, she tried to get Rule framed for murder. Bad press for you. More distrust between you and the law in general. Now think about who’s been attacked—and how. Think about what the potion was designed to do.”
“Hmm.” Isen fingered his beard. “I do believe you’ve spotted a pattern. The attacks on lupi haven’t been designed to kill us. Killing is a by-product. She wants to turn humans against us.”
“Devil’s advocate here,” Cullen said. “We don’t know what the potion dumped in our water supply would have done.”
“Which means we can’t factor it in,” Lily said. “Either for or against.”
“It doesn’t fit her previous strategies,” Rule said slowly. “During the Great War, she pitted one group of humans against another. She didn’t try to turn all humans against us. I’m not saying she couldn’t have learned a new trick, but—”
“Eriodus,” the Rhej murmured without looking up from the yarn in her lap. “The Twins.”
That must have meant something to Rule. “Ah. Yes, it worked with the Twins, didn’t it?” He looked at Lily. “By giving the humans of a small but strategic kingdom a common enemy to unite against—the king’s twin sons, who were accused of dabbling in death magic—she was able to insinuate her worship into the highest councils. Eventually her agents controlled the kingdom.”
“So we’re agreed?” Lily asked, looking around. “She doesn’t just want to destroy lupi. She wants to use your destruction to increase her power among the general population. She wants a pogrom, a witch hunt, a second Purge, with lupi as the target.”
“I’ll agree that’s one of her plans,” Isen said. “She plans in multiples. You may have noted that she was setting this up with Friar well before the Azá attempted to open that hellgate. If they’d succeeded, she wouldn’t have needed Friar.”
“Wouldn’t she?” Rule said. “Let’s speculate. Say the hellgate had opened and the world is at war with demons. Friar would be talking the same ‘us against them’ rant he spews now—and he’d have an even bigger, angrier, more frightened audience. How hard would it be to extend the fear of demons to fear of all nonhumans? Perhaps that was her original plan. Or one of them.”
A chill ran down Lily’s spine. The Great Bitch had so nearly succeeded … “Now think about who she wanted just plain dead, no tricky PR campaign needed. First, the head of the federal Unit that investigates crimes connected to magic. Second, the federal agent closely allied with lupi.”
Isen’s eyebrows lifted. “You’re thinking that she wants to cut us off from the support and protection of our government.”
“I’m thinking she doesn’t want the lupi and the government working together. That’s what she’s trying to prevent, which means that together we threaten her plans. Which means you can’t afford to burn any legal bridges tonight.”
Isen shook his head. “It could just as easily mean it will take both legal agents and those acting outside the law to stop her. The human world doesn’t know about her. They can’t and won’t react to what she does quickly and decisively enough to stop her. We can.”
“Sure,” Cullen muttered. “If we ever stop fighting each other.”
“Here’s a clue,” the Rhej said, her needles busy. “You have two Chosens now. One is an FBI agent. The other works for the FBI. I’m sure there were many reasons Lily and Arjenie were Chosen. The Lady is efficient—she layers many purposes into a single gift. But I think it’s no coincidence you have two Lady-touched who are connected to the law.”
Isen frowned and didn’t respond.
“Look, I know why you have to get Brian out,” Lily said. “But I have to ask—what if the tip about him was deliberate? Maybe Dya had orders to call you. Maybe she’s sincere, but has been tricked or manipulated. What if that’s why no one called the cops today? Because Friar wants you free to invade his place, and get caught doing it.”