Rule couldn’t look at Madame Li Lei Yu without thinking of a cat. She knew she was in charge, whatever the idiots around her might think. Right now, she was a cat who wanted a door opened. Immediately.
Lily gave Rule a wry glance and left the restroom. He followed.
At the west end of the hall another officer was talking with one of the women who’d complained about the locked restroom door. Food smells drifted in from the nearby kitchen, and the sounds of diners in the public part of the restaurant competed with the hum from the rooms occupied by the wedding party.
Here, under the suspicious eyes of the patrol cop, three women made a triangle, with the oldest and smallest of them at its apex. Julia Yu—the one in the middle— touched her daughter’s shoulder, looking anxious. Lily gave her a reassuring smile and turned to her grandmother. “I’m here, as instructed.”
“Ha! You do not fool me. You come because you are ready to come.”
Two pairs of black eyes met—one wrapped in wrin“-kles, one surrounded by smooth young skin. The two women were almost of equal height. Alike in other ways, too, some of them visible. ”You don’t want me to neglect my duty,“ Lily said.
“Pert,” her grandmother announced. “Always you are pert.” She cupped Lily’s cheek. The skin on the back of her hand was as fine and soft as tissue laid over the strict architecture of bone and tendon. Her nails were red and beautifully tended. “You are well, child?”
Lily smiled into that cupped hand. “Aside from the little guy hammering on my skull from the inside, yes.”
“Then reassure your mother. She worries.”
Julia Yu was indignant. “You were the one who insisted on coming to see for yourself that she was all right. You wouldn’t take my word for it. Or Susan’s, and she’s a doctor.”
Madame Yu ignored that, dropping her hand and turning to Rule. “You do not greet me.”
“I but await my opportunity.” He bent and kissed one whisper-soft cheek.
Her eyebrows shot up. “You flirt with your lover’s grandmother?”
“I flirt with you, Madame. It is irresistible.”
“Good. I like flattery when it is done well. Tell your peculiar friend I wish to see him.”
“Ah… which peculiar friend would that be?”
She chuckled. “You have so many, eh? The beautiful one.”
“She means Cullen,” Lily said dryly.
Of course she did. Rule eyed the old woman, wondering if he wanted to know why she wished to see Cullen. Probably not, he decided. “I’ll give you his phone number, but he doesn’t always answer it.”
“I dislike telephones. You tell him come see me when I return.”
“Return?” Julia Yu frowned. “What are you talking about? You aren’t going anywhere. You don’t like to travel.”
“Tomorrow I get on an airplane. I fly to China.”
In the sudden silence, Rule looked at the faces of the three women. Julia Yu was shocked. Madame Yu was obviously enjoying her daughter-in-law’s reaction. And Lily… her distress was plain, at least to him. It showed in her stillness, her lack of expression, the change in her scent.
He moved closer to her. “This wasn’t a sudden decision,” he told the old woman grimly. “You can’t get a visa for China overnight.”
“Can I not?” Her expression suggested he’d fallen from grace. She shrugged and spoke to her granddaughter. “For years, I have thought of such a trip. I am many years now in America. There are people and places in China I would see again before I die. Or they do.”
“You’ve talked about a trip,” Lily said, “but you never made plans. Why now?”
“I am an old woman. I am reminded of this recently.”
The unexpected wryness in Grandmother’s voice made Rule think she referred to the battle two weeks ago—one involving a number of armed Azá, himself, Cullen, Lily, a handful of FBI agents, several wolves… and one very large tiger.
Madame Li Lei Yu hadn’t seemed like an old woman to him at the time.
Lily had herself back under control. “Li Quin will go with you?”
“She, too, has people and places to see. My gardens—” She broke off, turning as Rule did toward the east end of the hall.
Rule knew who was coming by the sound of the footsteps. A moment later the man appeared around the bend in the halclass="underline" Abel Karonski, sometime friend, full-time FBI agent, part of a special unit of the Magical Crimes Division. And witch. The satchel he carried wouldn’t hold file folders or a change of clothes.
But the person with Abel wasn’t his partner, Martin Croft. Instead the agent was accompanied by a long, lanky woman with a butch-crop of silvery blond hair, half a dozen earrings in each ear, a badly fitted gray suit, and deep-set eyes the color of old whiskey.
Most people wouldn’t notice the eyes. Not at first. All they’d see were the tattoos.
“Cynna!” Rule exclaimed.
Her mouth tilted up between the indigo whorls looping from cheeks to chin. “Hey, Rule. Fancy meeting me here, huh?”
“YOU’VE added a few,” Rule said, pulling out a chair.
After a brief confusion, Lily, Rule, Karonski, and the unexpected addition to their task force had adjourned to the restaurant’s smallest private dining room. It held one table, six chairs, and a coffee pot.
“More than a few, but some of ‘em don’t show in polite company.” The woman’s grin rearranged the designs on her cheeks. “Damn, you look good. Haven’t changed a bit. Maybe you’d like to check out some of my new tattoos later.”
Lily sat in the chair Rule was holding. She supposed she’d better get used to women propositioning Rule. It was going to happen.
Karonski put down his satchel, pulled out one of the chairs, and sat. “Dammit, Cynna, I told you—”
“And I told you that was bullshit. Rule’s a lupus.”
“Ah, Cynna.” Rule’s smile held a definite tinge of regret. “As delightful as such a study would be, I must decline. I’m not available.”
The woman’s eyebrows went up. She looked at Lily, her expression hard to read behind all the tattoos. But she didn’t look friendly.
Lily decided her head hurt too much to figure out how to handle this blast from Rule’s past. She knew how she felt about it, though. Pissed. But who was she supposed to be angry with?
Karonski, maybe, for springing Cynna Weaver on her like this. She’d wondered if Weaver was here to execute an AG warrant—in effect, an order of execution signed by the U.S. attorney general. The FBI’s temporary director was pushing for one, though so far the attorney general wasn’t buying. No surprise there. The political fallout could be huge, since AG warrants had traditionally only been issued against nonhumans.
Like lupi.
But Karonski had assured her Weaver was part of the unit. She was here to help find Harlowe, not to kill him. Lily turned to him. “What exactly did you tell her about Rule and me?”
“That she’s to behave. Rule’s taken.” He looked around. “Didn’t someone say something about coffee?”
Lily would have smiled if her head hadn’t hurt so much. Karonski was an overfed white male with a severe wardrobe impairment, the stubbornness to outlast a jackass, and a firm belief in the power of caffeine. He was also her boss. “Sure. It’s right there. Get me a cup, too.”
He heaved a sigh and went after his version of life support.
Their little haven had originally been intended for the use of business types. With cops everywhere, the suits hadn’t thought this was a good time to discuss a merger or acquisition or whatever, so Karonski had commandeered the room and the coffee. While the four of them conferred, the S.O.C. team was going through their routine—they’d arrived on Karonski’s heels—and other local cops took the names and addresses of everyone in the restaurant.