Rule hesitated, his dark eyes troubled. “Thranga,” he said at last. “Perhaps.”
“Well, now I understand completely. If you…”
Rule’s head turned, alerting her that he’d heard something. A second later she did, too—footsteps.
Baxter appeared in the doorway. “Hastings tracked down the bartender at his girlfriend’s place and is bringing him up. I told him we’d use my office. Might put the man more at ease than one of the interrogation rooms.” He eyed the pizza box. “Any leftovers?”
“Nope.” Lily pushed her chair back. “I’ll be right there.”
Baxter nodded and headed back down the hall. Lily took the empty pizza box to the trash can. They were out of time—again. There never seemed to be enough time for the questions that mattered.
Still, she could hit one of them. “What was your favorite TV show when you were a kid?”
“You ask the oddest things.”
“I watched Sesame Street. Was that on when you were little?”
“No, I was a Mouseketeer.”
“A Mouseketeer.” A grin spread across her face. “Really? Did you have the hat?”
“I don’t remember. No, I don’t think I did.” He came to her and put his hand on her good shoulder. “You’ll be here awhile longer, I take it.”
“Looks like. I tell you what. If it will make you feel better, I’ll call you when I’m ready to leave.” Lily was pleased with herself. Who said she couldn’t compromise?
The twist to his mouth didn’t look happy. ‘“I expect my meeting to last awhile. I’m likely to be later than you will be.”
“Okay. If you need to take your car, I’ll get a ride.”
“I can’t leave unless you’ll accept another guard in my place.”
“Rule.” Don’t overreact, she told herself. Naturally he worried, with the way she’d been targeted. “I’m not claiming to be invulnerable, but I am a good shot. I can get myself home just fine.”
“A gun is little defense if you’re asleep when an attack comes.”
She glanced at the hall. Was that the elevator? “You sleep, too.”
“Sentry sleep is different.”
“What’s that? No, wait, I don’t have time for explanations. I need to get back.”
“Indulge me a moment first. I’ll keep this brief.” He took her face in his hands and bent to kiss her.
That was another great thing about him, she thought after he stepped back and she could think again. When he kissed, he gave it his complete attention. Maybe she’d been wrong about that “half-a-beer” analogy. “Remind me to ask you about sentry sleep.”
“All right. Benedict’s waiting in the parking lot to give you a ride when you’re ready.”
“What?”
“He thought it best to wait for you outside the building so he didn’t have to disarm. He agrees about the value of bullets where demons are concerned.”
“That’s gratifying, but—”
“You might call downstairs and let the guard know so he doesn’t think Benedict is lurking outside so he can bomb the building or something.” He turned to go.
“Wait! Wait a minute! I didn”t say I’d let him play bodyguard.“
“Play?” Rule paused in the doorway, smiling. “You say that, yet you’ve met my brother.”
She stared at him, unamused.
He sighed. “Lily, the Rho uses bodyguards. It doesn’t diminish him.”
“The Rho agrees to use them. I didn’t agree to a damned thing.”
“But you aren’t stupid, so you will. Besides, you’ll need a ride home. Why not use Benedict? He’s here.”
“He’s here because you arranged it. You didn’t ask me.” She heard voices in the hall—the bartender, complaining about having his night off interrupted, and one of the agents soothing him.
“You’ve been busy. I took the liberty of entering Benedict’s cell phone number on your phone’s speed dial—number twelve. If you’ll let him know when you’re ready to leave, he’ll be ready.”
Which meant he’d planned this hours and hours ago, when she’d handed him her phone to call Cullen. Then sprung it on her at the last minute. “Dammit, I have to go. But we are going to talk about this.”
He smiled. “Of course. Until later, nadia.”
FOURTEEN
AT eight o’clock on Saturday night, Club Hell was packed and noisy. Rule felt the vibration from the music in the soles of his feet, even back in the cubbyhole Cullen used for a dressing room. He had no idea how the human patrons of the place could hear each other out there.
Of course, that was one of the reasons he’d chosen Club Hell for the circle. They needed to come together on neutral ground, and the club had supplied that many times over the years for less formal meetings than the one tonight. No one could eavesdrop on them physically. “Max said the others are already here.”
“I saw a few of them.” Cullen wiped his face with a towel. He was sweaty and as naked as the law allowed, having just finished his performance. “Including Leidolf.”
That name jolted Rule. Max hadn’t mentioned that, damn him. “Who did they send?”
“Dear Randy.”
Randall Frey, the other clan’s Lu Nuncio. Rule’s counterpart. That was good, a sign they were taking this seriously… but he wouldn’t turn his back on the man.
“I don’t put much stock in Leidolf’s decision to participate,” Cullen said, tossing the towel on the shelf that served as his dressing table. “They want to know what you’re up to, that’s all.”
Leidolf and Nokolai had a long, unhappy history. Most recently it included an attack on Rule’s father that had left him badly injured and one Nokolai dead… along with three members of Leidolf. “That’s true of others as well. We knew that once we convinced a certain number to come, others would decide they couldn’t afford to be left out. Leidolf did send the heir.”
“Status.” Cullen grabbed his jeans. “Can’t let their representative be outranked by you.”
“Perhaps.” Rule leaned against the wall, fighting an urge to fling open the door. Cullen was annoyingly impervious to the usual lupus distaste for small, enclosed spaces. “How many agreed to come tonight? Max was in a lather about something when he let me in the back door. He didn’t hang around long enough to give me a head count.”‘
Cullen grinned and stepped into his jeans. “1 can imagine. Poor Max. He likes to be in the middle of things almost as much as he likes to play it safe.”
Rule’s eyebrows lifted. “You know something I don’t?”
“Five more are attending this circle than came to the first one, in spite of the short notice—and they include a bumper crop of Lu Nuncios. Ought to make for a lively meeting. I can almost smell the seru now.”
“What’s changed?”
“Etorri is here.”
Etorri… the most honored of them all. In the long centuries since the Great War, the clan had nearly winked out of existence more than once. The single Etorri who’d survived that conflict had been altered in ways that set him and his descendents apart; the magic was too wild in them, diminishing fertility. Somehow the clan had persisted, though. Equally amazing, perhaps, was their persistent integrity. They lived up to their du.
Etorri. The clutch of pride-blinded, self-righteous fools who had expelled Cullen from their ranks for practicing sorcery, dooming him to life as an outcast… if he lived. The clanless usually committed suicide or went insane.