Not Ruben, he thought as he went through the open French doors into a large, well-lit kitchen. Mainly because Ruben was not a practitioner, but also, Rule thought the welcome he felt suggested an Earth Gift, not spellwork. And Ruben’s Gift was aligned with fire.
Deborah, then. Odd that Ruben had never mentioned his wife’s Gift . . . or perhaps not. He seldom mentioned Deborah. Rule had wondered about that. He doubted that he’d gone half a day without speaking of Lily since he met her. But for all that he knew a good deal about human sexual customs, marriage remained a mystery to him.
It was a mystery he was growing eager to explore. Why had he thought it a good idea to wait until March for the ceremony?
He passed from the kitchen to a spacious, slightly cluttered den, then into a hall that gave access to the front of the house and to the stairs. Rule approved of Ruben’s home. His own taste leaned more toward contemporary, but he had a love for old wood. Clearly, either Ruben or Deborah did, too, judging by the antiques sprinkled throughout their house.
The banister curving along the stairwell was old, too. He rested a hand on it as he climbed to the second floor. Smooth wood, polished by countless hands over the years. Had Ruben once dreamed that his children’s hands would be among those polishing the wood? This was a large house for two people, yet he and Deborah had no children, either by birth or adoption. Rule wondered about that, too.
Of course, humans weren’t as uniformly focused on children as lupi. There was a cultural assumption that everyone wanted children, but that wasn’t always the case. Perhaps he was imagining a grief where none existed.
The stairwell opened into a hall with lovely wainscoting. Rule followed something that was not a tug, not a song, but was every bit as dear and certain to a door on the left. He knocked softly.
Lily opened it. She glanced behind him, confirming that he was alone, and sighed. “I’ve washed my hands, played with my hair, glossed up my lips . . . I’m running out of things to do in case someone comes up here and finds me hanging out in the bathroom. I take it Ruben asked you to wait around, too?”
“Your lips are beautifully glossy.” He bent and kissed them lightly. “Apples. I like it. Almost everyone is gone. I believe we can wander downstairs now.”
She started for the stairs with him. “Do you know where he wants us to wait? Deborah didn’t say.”
“In his study, I think. You and Deborah hit it off.”
She slid him a grin. “You sent her to fetch me.”
“I assure you I did not.”
“Her word, not yours, maybe. But you wanted me to come meet Senator Bixton’s chief of staff.”
“Dennis Parrott. A smooth man. Like an iceberg, most of him remains hidden, and the exposed surface is cool and glossy. I’d like to hear your impression of him. Also, most people find it harder to accept killing if they know the victim.”
She stopped moving. “You think Parrott wants me dead?”
“Not you specifically, perhaps, but he might privately use the term collateral damage if you were killed by one of the haters he and Bixton court. Publicly, of course, he would acknowledge no responsibility for the results of the inflammatory speeches he writes for Bixton.”
“Doesn’t the senator have a speechwriter?”
“He does, but Parrott handles speeches that deal with magical policy in all its many forms. He has ties to Humans First.”
Her expression soured. “Is he going to be at the big rally?” The Humans Firsters had planned demonstrations to take place across the country. The big one would be here in D.C. at the Mall.
“Bixton’s supposed to give a speech. Parrott will attend with him.”
“Why in the world did Ruben invite him?”
“A better question might be, why did he come?”
She started down the stairs again. “I’ll bite. Why did he?”
“I’m not sure. He despises Ruben, though he hides it well. Fears him, too, and hides that even better. If I weren’t able to smell his fear, I wouldn’t know.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t you he was afraid of?”
“We’ve met before, and he’s concluded I’m safe.”
“Is he foolish about other things, too?”
Rule smiled. “Perhaps I should say that he knows I won’t attack him physically. But he’s known Ruben longer and better than he has me, and fears him more. I find that interesting.”
“I’d guess that Ruben stands between him and something he wants. You don’t.”
That’s why he’d wanted her to meet Parrott. She had a good mind, quick to cut through gristle and fat to the meat. “You may be right. Maybe Ruben can tell us what that something is.”
“Do you have any idea why Ruben wanted to talk to us privately? The two of us.” She frowned. “He said it was about the war, and that’s just weird. He’s not lupi.”
“He’s our ally.”
“Yes, but first and foremost, he’s FBI. Government. The U.S. government isn’t at war. For the most part, it doesn’t even know the Great Bitch exists.”
War did not mean the same thing to humans as it did to lupi. Rule knew this. Most beings who knew anything about the Great War—and not many did—believed it had ended roughly three thousand years ago. Not lupi. To them, war ended only with the death or complete subjugation of the enemy, and their Lady’s enemy was an Old One, as incapable of dying as she was of submission. Three thousand years might be a very long lull in the action, but lupi had been at war with her for all that time.
Recently the lull had ended.
“I think I understand what you mean,” Rule said as they crossed the entry hall. The study door was almost directly opposite the staircase. It stood open. “For humans or lupi, war is a joint effort. An individual can only consider himself at war in a metaphorical sense, if his society isn’t also at war. Perhaps Ruben spoke metaphorically.”
“I don’t think so,” she said dryly. “Maybe he wanted me to know it was about her without saying so directly. Deborah was right there.”
“You think he hasn’t told his wife about our enemy?”
“I don’t know what he’s told her. He carries a lot of secrets in his head. Some of them he isn’t free to talk about. Some he may not want to talk about.”
Rule considered that as they went into a room that, by day, would be sun-flooded from the tall windows on the north wall. Tonight the drapes were closed and the only light came from a floor lamp. It was an inviting room—dark cherry desk and file cabinets, chocolate drapes, cinnamon upholstery on the two armchairs, walls the color of an old chamois. The warm colors were likely Deborah’s doing, since Ruben didn’t take an interest in such things. But those chamois-colored walls held objects Ruben did take an interest in: books, framed photos, a tribal mask, what looked like a broken walking stick, and a magnificent abstract painting.
Lily, however, was looking at the floor, not the walls. “Is that for decoration, do you think?”
The floor here was the same warm hickory as on the rest of the ground floor, with one addition: a thin silvery inlay delineated a circle that included most of the room. “You can ask Ruben. I wonder if the need to keep secrets from Deborah is why . . .”
“Why what?”
“Ruben and Deborah seem to possess the kind of rapport that comes from intimacy. She’s important to him, yet he seldom speaks of her. It seemed odd to me, but perhaps that’s how he protects those secrets he holds. He doesn’t speak often of his work to his wife. He doesn’t speak often of his wife when he’s working.”