"But that's not—it isn't—it can't be physically possible. A dragon?" She was at the door. The knob turned.
Rule's left foot landed on gray carpet.
Vertigo struck. He staggered, righted himself, and looked around wildly. He—he was in a hall, one of the many hallways of the FBI building. He heard a copy machine humming, voices behind him and in the office to his left, the chime of the elevator up ahead as it stopped on this floor.
This floor? Which one? Where was he?
Lily grabbed his arm. "Rule? What is it? What's wrong?"
"We…" He turned carefully, looking back down the hall. Back the way he must have come. It was the same floor, he realized. The conference room was just around that bend.
Lily didn't seem to notice anything wrong, other than the way he was acting. Whatever had happened, it happened to him, not both of them. "I was in the conference room with Sherry and the archbishop. You and Fagin were about to enter. You'd just turned the doorknob. Then… then I was here."
Her eyes were wide with distress, her voice level. "You've been with me since I walked back into the conference room."
"What happened?" What could possibly have happened to rob him of himself for… how long? How much time had he lost?
Lily took the question literally. "Fagin and I came in. Archbishop Brown explained about the problem with holy water. He said Sherry's healer will have a look at you, then her coven will perform some sort of ritual. You didn't say much, but you were there. Present. Ifelt you as clearly as I feel you now. Then Cullen called, and—"
"Cullen called?"
"You spoke to him." The distress leaked into her voice. "He called on my phone to let me know what happened with the demon. It had possessed someone. They dispatched it, but Cynna was hurt. Then he talked to you—something about, uh, heres va-lus. Clan stuff. You—you were going to explain that, but wanted to wait until we were private."
"Cynna—"
"She'll be okay."
Would he? Rule knew he couldn't be possessed, and yet… "Are you sure it was me?"
"You sounded like yourself. I felt you there, beside me. You…" She stopped, swallowed. "I touched you. I didn't feel anything, no spell, no…"
"Demon." He searched for a scrap, a hint, any shred of memory that something had occurred between the moment he'd watched the doorknob turn and the one when he found himself in midstride on this hall.
Nothing. "I don't remember. I don't remember any of it."
Instinctively she reached for his arm. Her eyes widened—then narrowed. She stared at her hand, then deliberately reached up and touched the bare skin of his face.
"Well, shit," she said.
NINETEEN
SOMEONE was messing with her foot. It hurt. She jerked it away.
"Hold still."
That was Cullen's voice. He sounded peevish. Someone— Cullen?—yanked her foot back onto the warm place it had been resting and wiped it with the stinging stuff again.
"Ow!" Cynna's eyes popped open.
"Don't be a sissy. It's not much of a cut."
She blinked as memory seeped back in. She was lying on her back in a bed—pretty decent bed, too. Soft. The ceiling was white, and somewhere that longhair music was still playing. So she was still in Victor Frey's house, and not too much time had passed.
What had happened after things went black? Was the demon… Check, fool.
She did a quick cast. Okay, good. She was badly drained, but she was sure the demon wasn't nearby. And Cullen was all right. What about Merilee and Frey and Timms and the lupus guards? Had they come through okay? She propped herself up on one elbow.
Hey. Her head didn't hurt.
She was in a small bedroom with faded wallpaper and maple furniture. Very tidy, like the rest of the house. Cullen sat on the bed with her right foot in his lap. His hair was mussed, and his shirt was ripped and bloody. "You're hurt."
"No, dummy, you are." He finished what he'd been doing with the washrag and picked up a tube of antibiotic ointment.
"I guess I stepped on something." She didn't remember cutting her foot, but in all the excitement she might not have noticed. A dozen questions jockeyed for position. She plucked the simplest and asked it. "What happened?"
"You pissed off a demon." His voice was funny. He squirted ointment on her foot and smeared it around. "Remember that part?"
"Yeah. She clobbered me."
"She cracked your skull." Now he looked up, and she knew why he'd sounded odd. She'd never heard him flat-out furious before. "Of all the lamebrained, stupid-ass stunts—"
"Did it work?"
He shoved her foot off his lap and sprang to his feet. "I'm not believing this. Two humans and three lupi go after a demon. Do the humans let the lupi deal with the hand-to-hand? No, since you lack the common sense of a dung beetle, you—"
"Two humans? Is Timms okay?"
The door opened. A handsome woman with broad hips and shoulders and hot-cocoa skin came in. "Banged up some, but he'll mend. They're loading him into the ambulance now. He wouldn't let me set his arm—said he wanted a real doctor." She looked at Cullen. "Quit yelling at my patient."
She was a patient? Cynna gave her head a shake. Nothing rattled. "I'm fine. What happened with Frey and Merilee and the demon? Anyone else hurt?"
The woman turned a solemn face on her. She looked somewhere over forty but still downwind of old age; beyond that, it was hard to guess. "The Rho's well enough to heal on his own, thanks to you. Merilee…" She sighed. "Ah don't know about her. Her body's not hurt aside from a couple bruises, and the baby's fine, praise the Lord. But the poor child's mind is a mess."
Possession could do that to you. "Then the demon's not in her anymore."
The full lips tightened. "Ah got rid of it."
"You did? Oh—excuse me. It would be nice if Mr. Gorgeous got over his snit long enough to introduce us, but I'm not holding my breath. I'm Cynna Weaver."
A laugh rolled up from the woman's comfortable middle. She glanced at Cullen, who was leaning against the wall, arms crossed, scowling at both of them. "Ah think maybe I like you, Cynna Weaver. I'm the Leidolf Rhej, and I'm a healer, which is why you ain't in that ambulance with the other one."
Cynna knew the clans' holy women didn't usually offer their names, so she didn't ask. "You're also an exorcist, I take it."
"Not till today, but the Lady don't put up with demons messing with her people. Good thing someone had the sense to send for me. Ah had a few minutes to call up the right memory for the job."
"That was you," Cynna said to Cullen. "You had Boss Guard send someone to get her, didn't you?"
He just kept scowling. He didn't like Rhejes, she knew. Or maybe grudge was a better word than dislike—a grudge connected to the time he'd spent clanless. Which he didn't talk about, so she didn't know what the connection was, but maybe that was what was making him act like a ten-year-old who'd had his TV privileges taken away.
"He did," the woman said, " since it didn't occur to my bone-head brother to fetch me. That was a right mess I walked into— you an' the other human sprawled out like the dead, my brother and that David tryin' to hold down Merilee. She was pretty lively, too."
"Timms couldn't get a dart in her?"
Cullen condescended to speak. "Oh, he darted her. The tran-quilizer didn't exactly make her tranquil, though, so he rushed her with the others. Idiot."
"The drug had some effect," the Rhej said judiciously. "Or else Alex and David couldn't've held her down at all. She did toss David off once—that's when she tried to rip open your Mr. Gor-geous's throat. Good thing she just had fingernails to work with, not claws."
Cynna's head swung toward Cullen. "That's your blood," she said accusingly.