“And I thought you might lean on Cullen for some pro bono work.”
“Actually, I already spoke with him. He’ll be here . . .” The sudden wincing around her eyes, the draining of blood from her face, had him on his feet. “Lily.”
“It’s that damn headache again.”
“That’s twice today,” he said grimly.
“Yeah. This one doesn’t seem to be going away as fast as the other two.” Her voice was thin. She touched the air near the back of her head. “Is this what a migraine feels like? I swear I’m never going to . . .” Her eyes closed.
“That’s it. You’re getting checked out by—” He leaped and caught her as she toppled out of the chair.
He went to the floor with her spread across his lap, his heart pounding in fear. Her eyes were rolled back in her head. Her pulse was rapid when he pressed his fingers to her throat. She was so damn pale. “You’ve got five seconds to wake up, then I call the ambulance. One—”
“Didn’t faint,” she whispered, her eyes still closed.
His own eyes closed briefly in relief. “You gave a damn fine impression of it.”
“I’m okay. Headache’s gone.” He could see the effort it took to force her eyes open. “When the pain shut off, I went dizzy. Now . . . just tired. No ambulance.”
“You’ve got to be checked out.”
“No doctors. They’d look at my arm, figure out something was going on with it. Can’t tell ‘em what, so better not provoke them.”
He wasn’t sure a regular doctor would be much help, or he’d bundle her in the car over her objections and take her to the ER right now. Fortunately, there was an alternative. “The Leidolf Rhej will be here tomorrow.”
She blinked. “Oh. Mika told you.”
“Mika? What does he . . .” He scowled. “If you suffered a reaction at your mindspeech lesson and didn’t tell me—”
“No, no.” Her hand flopped vaguely in denial. “He wants to watch a healer work. He wanted you to bring him one.” Her eyes closed. “Rhejes don’t jump when their Rho says hop.”
“She’ll come. For this, she’ll come.”
“’Kay. I’m so damn tired. Did you make coffee?”
He gathered her in his arms and stood. “I’ll put some on. You might as well rest while it’s brewing.”
She was asleep before he was halfway up the stairs.
TWELVE
LILY woke to the sound of voices downstairs. She knew before opening her eyes Rule wasn’t beside her, so no surprise that one of those voices was his. The other was familiar, but unexpected.
She glanced at the clock—6:22. A normal time to wake up, but those glowing numbers said she’d slept for nearly ten hours. She never slept that long. But then, she didn’t usually pass out from exhaustion.
Her head didn’t hurt. She felt fine . . . in a “gibbering in fear” sort of way.
What was wrong with her?
She wasn’t going to figure that out by pulling the covers over her head, even if that sounded good at the moment. Might as well get her day started.
Fifteen minutes later she headed downstairs with her hair still wet from the shower. Rule met her on the staircase and handed her a mug of coffee without speaking . . . at least, not out loud. His eyes said plenty.
She sipped. Rule made incredible coffee. “I feel fine. I don’t know what’s wrong. Something is, but until we have more facts, I don’t see any point in thinking about it.”
His mouth crooked up in spite of the worry in his eyes. “Qualified denial?”
“It isn’t denial if I admit something’s wrong.”
“I spoke with the Leidolf Rhej. She’ll be here by noon.”
The muscles across her shoulders loosened in relief. “Good. It’s probably some sort of weird migraine.”
“You won’t use the investigation as an excuse to delay seeing the Rhej.”
“You need to stop pulling mantle on me. It doesn’t work, and it annoys me. But yes, I’ll make time for her. I’ll come home for lunch. I’m not an idiot.” She started down the stairs again. “Cullen’s here.”
“I asked him to come yesterday.”
“You said something about that just before I got the headache we aren’t talking about. Is Cullen, uh . . . is he part of Ruben’s group?”
“I’ve briefed him on what I know about Bixton’s death.”
In other words, she wasn’t part of their secret club, so he couldn’t tell her who was. Lily kept moving. “I smell sausage.”
“There should be some left. I threatened Cullen’s life if he ate all of it.”
The only lupus sorcerer in the history of the planet sat at their kitchen table, finishing up a plate of French toast. He was a bit shorter than Rule, his hair a bit lighter brown—more spice than mink—and his face stopped people in their tracks. The spectacular face went well with a supernally graceful body.
This morning that face was unshaven, the expression surly, and the body dressed in disreputable jeans. He wore a small diamond in one ear, a larger one on a chain around his neck, and his T-shirt bore a cartoon of what seemed to be a Sasquatch in a ninja costume.
Sometimes Lily did not get Cullen’s sense of humor. “A ninja Sasquatch?”
“Cool, isn’t it?”
“Sit,” Rule said. “I’ll fix you some French toast.”
Lily wasn’t going to argue with French toast. She sat. “What time did you get in?” she asked Cullen.
“Plane landed at one. Traffic sucked. Got here about two. Napped for a couple hours.” He dragged the last bite of battered bread through a puddle of maple syrup. “You going to eat your sausage?”
“Yes. How—”
“Don’t know yet, but you’ve got a minimum of five perps.”
“So I assumed. What I was about to ask is, how are Cynna and the baby?”
Surly vanished, eclipsed by what Lily could only call a glow. Cullen’s phone was on the table. He shoved it at her, tapped the screen a couple times, and said, “Beautiful. See? They’re both ungodly beautiful. She’s smiling in some of these pics. I don’t care what they say—that’s a real smile.”
“She” meant Ryder, Lily assumed, the six-pound, seven-ounce explosion that had rocked the clans’ world. Cullen and Cynna had a daughter. And she was lupus.
That was impossible. There had never been a female lupus and there never would be. Lupi had daughters sometimes, sure, but only their sons could Change. Only their sons were lupi. Yet according to Cullen, who could see the magical energy around his daughter, little Ryder would someday turn wolf. According to the Rhejes, Cullen was right.
A lot of lupi were dealing with this knockout punch to their worldview in the time-honored way: selective denial. Yes, the Lady said that the arrival of a female lupus meant that war had resumed with their ancient enemy. War was fine. They understood war. They did not understand the concept of a female lupus, so they refused to talk about it.
Lily had started scrolling through a few hundred lovely if incredibly repetitious photos of the mother and baby stored on Cullen’s phone when Rule set a plate of French toast in front of her. As she ate, Cullen talked about cloth diapers, tiny fingernails, Cynna’s breasts—she was breast-feeding, as about a hundred of the photos testified—infant massage, and gas.
It was surprisingly comforting. Not interesting, no. She couldn’t say she found a lecture on various ways to burp a baby interesting. But comforting. By the time Rule joined them with his own plate, Lily had almost finished thumbing through the photos and Cullen was discussing the potential problems of seeing a daughter through First Change.
“. . . one of the biggies, of course, being contraceptives.” He brooded on that a moment. “We have to assume the pill won’t work. As soon as she goes through the Change, her body will reject any drugs in her system. So we’ll have to rely on mechanical methods, but fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds aren’t noted for their skill at planning ahead. Telling the boys I’ll kill them if they forget to use a condom won’t work.”