“The majority of ghosts are irregulars, and they vary greatly in duties, capabilities, and knowledge. Most of them are highly trustworthy, but aren’t suited for the work of an agent. Some know a great deal about what we’re facing. Others don’t. They don’t get the identifier that you did.”
“The secret decoder ring.” She rubbed the dull pebble in her hand, frowned, and set it on her thigh. “Fagin said he wasn’t an agent.”
“He’s an irregular, yes.” He ran his fingers over her arm again. Her healed arm. “So are Mark and our other guards. Many of the irregulars are what you might call support staff. A few may become active agents, but aren’t ready yet. Others have specific, limited duties. A small number are . . . I think of them as sleepers. We may never need to call on them, but if we do, they’re in place.”
She chewed that over in silence, then picked up her pebble. After five seconds, it glowed briefly, then winked out. Thoughtfully she slid it in her pocket. “And associates? You called them a resource. They’re not part of the ghosts?”
“Associates provide specific services or information for a fee. Some are decent people. Some are not.” He couldn’t feel where the bullet had gone in at all, but he could feel a bit of scarring where it had blown out the front of her bicep. Not much. “Associates don’t know about the Shadow Unit, and we want to keep it that way. You’ll be given access to a database with a list of associates, some background on each of them, and what kinds of skills they offer.”
“It’s ... really weird that you’ve been setting all this up—you and Ruben and probably others, but you’ve been part of it. And I didn’t know. I’m not angry.” A quick glance at him. “It’s just weird.”
He slid his hand up her arm to her shoulder. “It’s been weird for me, too, Lily.” He bent to rub the side of his face along the top of her head. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here. They locked you up and I was far away. I was—”
She shifted and put her fingers on his lips. “No guilt. None. You did what you had to do, and I did what I had to do. And”—she sucked in a breath—“and I’m not ready to talk about the rest of it. About . . . my job. Not yet. Anyone else asks how I’m doing I’ll say okay, and that will be bullshit. It’s true, but it’ll still be bullshit, and I don’t want to give you bullshit. Only I don’t . . . I don’t have more right now.”
He looked into her eyes for a long moment. He wanted to push, wanted that badly. It couldn’t be good for her to keep everything throttled down inside, and he didn’t mind angering her. Anger might help her. And yet... “I suppose you think that, loving you and trusting you the way I do, I should accept that.”
Her lips moved in a small smile. “Yeah, I do. For now, anyway.”
Slowly he nodded. “For now.”
She sighed and settled against him.
“You could tell me about the jail.”
“You just agreed—”
“This isn’t about spilling your guts. Or about your career. Give me facts, not feelings.”
She rolled her eyes. “It was a holding cell. It stank. The food sucked and the company was on a par with the food. You’ve been in jail. You know what it’s like.”
“Don’t tell me what it’s like. Tell me about this particular jail. How many were in there with you?”
“It varied. The lowest number was ten. Made it downright roomy for a while.”
He kept asking questions. Solid, factual questions that kept her talking . . . and let him peek between the cracks. She was relaxed now, dealing with facts. He forced himself to stay relaxed, too. He wanted to kill those who’d put her in jail, who’d robbed her of what mattered most—but that was his need. Not hers.
When she paused, he asked, “You were in a county jail? In a holding cell the whole time?”
“Doesn’t make sense, does it? Why not a federal facility? Why wasn’t I questioned at all? Thinking about it made me paranoid. I kept thinking they’d put me there for a reason, and maybe that was so someone could get to me, so I didn’t sleep. Which sounds paranoid, all right, yet I’m still not sure why they didn’t try for me. I can’t see why ‘disgraced and dead’ wouldn’t work even better for them than just disgraced.” She shrugged. “Maybe I’m overestimating them. Maybe they couldn’t get someone thrown in lockup with me that fast.”
“You weren’t where you expected to be. Maybe you weren’t where our enemies expected you to be, either.”
“If so,” she said slowly, “that would mean Mullins isn’t one of them. He’s the one who took me in for booking. Maybe he took me to the wrong place.”
He turned his head so he could smell her hair. “Do you think Drummond is one of them?”
“Could be. Or Sjorensen. She’s the one who tipped me about Ruben. Or, hell, maybe it’s both of them. Or neither. I don’t have enough to make a guess yet.” She fell silent, then tipped her head to the side to look at him. “Isen told you what happened, right?”
His brows lifted. “Of course.” Isen thought there was a good chance her case would never go to trial—not enough evidence—but in the meantime she would almost certainly lose her job. Her badge. An administrative action didn’t require nearly the level of proof that a court did.
“I’m okay, Rule.”
She was tough and determined and not about to quit, and he felt her misery as clearly as if he’d turned empath. Maybe he breathed it in, some nuance of her scent he couldn’t consciously identify. She hurt, and he couldn’t fix it. “You will be.” He ducked his head lower, nuzzling her neck, breathing her in.
“You’ve been all wolfish ever since we got in the car. Petting me. Sniffing me.”
“Sorry.” He straightened. “I—”
“It’s okay.” She threaded her fingers in his hair and pulled his head back to her. “You’ve been scared for me. I guess your wolf wants to check me out.”
There was that vibration again.
“But it’s just the wolf who’s curious. You haven’t said anything about me being healed.”
“I knew about it, I knew . . .” Not a vibration. A trembling deep inside, as if . . . he had to hold it together. Had to stay calm. Lily needed him to stay calm. “The Rhej. Isen told me she said you’re healed. Completely healed.”
“It was pretty freaky when it was happening. My head felt weird and I got these tingles. It was like I stood a step back from my body, like it wasn’t entirely mine and . . . I didn’t know the mantle was putting in a rush job, getting everything fixed before it left. But that’s what it did.” She paused. “What your Lady did.”
His lips lifted in a snarl. “I’ll tell you what she did. She used you. She may have fixed you at the last minute, but she used you. I can accept you risking yourself. That’s what you do, who you are. I can’t accept her risking you that way. Using you.”
“I put myself at risk.”
“You didn’t know what you were agreeing to. You had no idea of the consequences. It’s my fault. I should have—”
“Whoa.” Now she straightened, pulling away from him enough to frown at him. “Where did that come from?”
“I wanted you to do it. I wanted you to keep Wythe’s mantle safe. You knew that, and because I thought it was safe, you did, too. She used me to get you to do what she wanted.”
Lily cocked her head, studying him. “You are truly, deeply pissed at your Lady.”
Yes. Yes, he was. Too angry to speak, the muscles of his jaws clenched tight on all that anger.
“As I understand it, the deal between your people and the Lady is that she gets to use you. You give her permission for that.”
He unlocked his jaws enough to say, “Not against you.”
“I gave permission, too.”
“You didn’t know what you were agreeing to.”
“Part of me did. No, wait, listen.” She put her hands on each side of his face as if she knew how tight he was there. How much he was holding back, holding in. “The first time, when Brian was dying, I didn’t notice anything like that. If the Lady was telling me things about what I’d agreed to, I didn’t notice it. But I think she did, because this time . . . in Ruben’s kitchen, I knew. I didn’t get any of it in words, but I knew exactly what I agreed to when I let that mantle go and flow into Ruben. The part of me she can talk to, it doesn’t have words, so I can’t hold on to what she says. I just know she cleared it with me first, and I agreed. I think that happened the first time, too, only it was such a different way of—of talking—I forgot it even happened.”
He felt like he was swimming in smoke—thick, acrid, and blinding both nose and eyes. He didn’t know what to say. What to think.
Lily stroked his face and spoke gently. “So the thing is, if you’re mad at the Lady for what she did, you have to be mad at me, too. It turned out okay, but she and I both risked me.”
“It didn’t turn out okay. You’ve lost your career.”
“I kind of think that’s the Great Bitch’s fault. And Friar’s. And maybe Sjorensen, or Drummond, or even Mullins. Someone set me up, but that someone wasn’t your Lady. She took advantage of the situation, I guess, to get me to go to Ruben so she could pass on the mantle. But she didn’t set me up.”
“You wouldn’t have gone there in person if she hadn’t tricked you into it. You’d have called, but you wouldn’t have been there when Drummond showed up. You wouldn’t have been arrested.”
“And if Ruben’s phone is tapped—and I’m betting it is—calling would have had the same result for me, but Ruben wouldn’t have gotten the mantle. He’d probably be in jail now instead of at Wythe Clanhome.”
The anger that had ridden him for days was draining out. Or burning down, if not out, leaving everything smoke and fog. He shook his head, but it did nothing to banish the fog. “You’re okay with it. You’re okay with being manipulated that way.”
“I’m okay with it the same way I’m okay with the mate bond. Or your father.”
That startled him into silence.
She grinned. “If you could see your face . . . what I mean is, sometimes it drives me crazy, not knowing what the mate bond’s going to do, and I hate that, but the bond makes me part of something other than me. There would be an ‘us’ even without the bond, but it helps, doesn’t it? When I was locked up, I knew you were hundreds of miles away, but that was good. It meant you and Ruben had gotten away, and knowing that helped. It helped a lot.”
“And my father?” he said dryly.
“He reminds me of the Lady.” She paused, her frown saying it was hard to find words. “I heard her. I didn’t get words, but I heard her voice, and . . . you know how Isen is. Tricky, sometimes manipulative. He never tells you everything, and you never know what he’s going to do. But whatever it is, it will be done with a clean heart. The Lady can be tricky, too, and she sure as hell doesn’t tell us much, and I have no idea what she’s going to do, and I don’t like that. But I think ... I feel like she’s got a clean heart. Like she’s clean all the way through.”
He put both arms around her and pulled her close and rested his head on top of hers. And sighed. “I think you’re right. If I can’t stop being angry with her, does that mean my heart isn’t clean?”
“It means you’re mad. That’s all it means.”
She was right . . . mostly. There was one other meaning to his anger. One cause that he hadn’t wanted to see. Fear was the tinder that anger burned, wasn’t it?
He was afraid of the Lady.
It was a thought so foreign he almost couldn’t grasp it. How could he fear that which made him who and what he was? Without the Change, the clans, the moon and the magic, he wouldn’t be. Someone else might have been born and given the name Rule Turner, but that man would not be him.
Moonsong, mantles, and magic. The half of him that ran on four legs and knew so much of love and blood and loyalty . . . all of that was not just from the Lady, but of her. How could he fear what was so much a part of him?
The answer floated up as if he’d always known it. For the first time, he’d found something his Lady could ask of him that he was not willing to give. His life, yes. That was hers. But not Lily’s.
He knew now that the Lady hadn’t asked that of him. Lily was whole and healthy. Perhaps she never would ask it. But he also knew that part of him wasn’t the Lady’s. Part of him could not be given freely to her, and fear rose from that part like a chilly mist.
He had an image suddenly of his wolf in a deep cavern, advancing cautiously into that cold mist. Sniffing. And snorting, unimpressed. It’s only fear.
Slowly the knots inside him eased. It was only fear. Nothing strange about fear. For several moments he didn’t move as the world returned to him . . . the blare of the stereo, the scent of Lily, of Mark, of the car itself. The warmth along his side and his shoulder from Lily’s body. The barely there bump of her heartbeat.
Lily was with him and she was physically healed and whole again. The other problems weren’t going away, but in this moment, things were good. She was here, and she was okay. She kept telling him that. Maybe he should believe her. “This was supposed to be my chance to comfort you.”
“It’s not an either-or deal. Comfort goes both ways.”
He found himself smiling. Yes, it did.