Blood Challenge

TWENTY

LILY’S arm ached and throbbed like a bad tooth. It did not, however, hurt enough for her to take the pills Rule was holding out. “I just woke up. I am not going back to sleep. Or in sleep. Or into a drugged stupor, or anything else resembling unconsciousness.”

Rule set the little paper cup with the pills back on the rolling table. “Pain saps the body’s strength. You’ll mend faster with it muted.”

“Mute the pain, mute the brain. I can’t think when I’m drugged. I need to think.” Ever since she’d learned about the probable traitor in the Bureau, she’d been either asleep or drugged. Mostly asleep. Maybe it had been necessary, but she’d had enough. “Caffeine has analgesic properties.”

His eyebrows lifted. “You want coffee at nine o’clock at night?”

“I would love a cup, thanks.”

He considered arguing. That was clear from his long, unblinking pause. Finally he stood, went to the door, and asked one of the guards to go to the Starbucks in the other building.

“Regular coffee’s fine,” she said. “I don’t need Starbucks.”

“Tough. I do.” He slipped the guard a bill. “Pick up soup and a sandwich, too.”

“I’m pretty sure I ate.” She didn’t remember what now, but someone had definitely pestered her to eat.

“You ate six bites—two of the Jell-O, one of the cake, and three of the strange noodle mixture which may have had bits of chicken hiding in it somewhere.” He closed the door again.

“You counted my bites.”

“It helped me resist the urge to force-feed you.”

“I guess I’ve been a pain.” Her memories of the last twenty-four hours were fuzzy, but a few stood out. She was pretty sure she’d cursed someone out at one point. “Do I owe Nettie an apology?”

“Probably, though she understands. You hate having others make decisions for you. I do, too, but I begin to think you inherited your magical grandsire’s sense of sovereignty.”

“I’m not that bad.” But her mouth kicked up as she tried to picture Sam as a patient, obedient to nurses’ and doctors’ ideas of when he should eat, sleep, get up, lie down, or pee in a cup. The mind boggled. It was just as well dragons healed themselves, she decided. “Nettie and the surgeon don’t agree on how long my arm’s going to be unusable, but either way, I’m going to be on sick leave awhile.”

“From your perspective, that bites.” He rejoined her, but didn’t sit down.

“From yours, too, since I’ll probably be hard to live with. Sjorensen was here earlier.”

“Yes, you asked for her. Do you not remember?”

“Not clearly. I was drugged.” Did she sound aggrieved, or just whiny? “I don’t think I told her anything I shouldn’t.”

“Ah.” He nodded. “I see your concern. You didn’t. You asked for her after exchanging civilities with the self-important buffoon the local FBI office put in charge of investigating the shooting.”

Now she remembered. Millhouse—that was the guy’s name. “Oh, yeah. It was him I cursed out, not Nettie. Good.”

For some reason that amused him. “You wished me to remind you to call the man’s superior. Perhaps you won’t need to, though. I spoke with Abel.”

“Abel Karonski?” Maybe her mind wasn’t working right yet, because she did not see the connection. Karonski was a Unit agent, not regular FBI. He couldn’t do anything about the local branch’s senior idiot.

“He called to see how you were doing, and I explained the problem with Millhouse. He’s going to speak with Croft about it. He seemed to think the personnel difficulty could be dealt with. He was on his way to D.C. when he called.”

“He finished up that hex case he was on?”

“No, he had to hand that off to someone else. He’s been put in charge of the investigation into the attempt on Ruben’s life.”

A tight knot of worry eased. “Good.” She thought it over a moment, and said it again. “Good. That’s excellent news.”

“It was Ruben’s suggestion. He had a hunch.”

“He must be doing better if he’s making suggestions.”

“Either that, or he’s no better at being a patient than you are.” Rule smiled when he said that, though, and stroked her hair. “You’re not hurting too much?”

“I’m in desperate agony, but I’m tough.” At the look on his face she added quickly, “Joke, Rule. That was a joke. It’s just pain. I don’t like it, and it ups the grouchy factor, but it’s already better than it was at first.” She expected to hurt more tomorrow, since she’d be moving around more. A lot more, if she had her way. She wanted out of the damned hospital.

Another memory surfaced. “My father called. So did my mother.” Two separate calls, one from each, and she dimly recalled that her father had made her laugh. She didn’t remember why, but she’d laughed. And her mother … Lily frowned. “She’s not coming here, is she?”

“It was a near thing, but I persuaded her you’d be home soon, so there was no need. She wants me to assure you that you are not to worry about the aesthetic effect of the sling.”

She looked at him blankly.

His mouth twitched. “Assuming you’re still using one at our wedding in March, that is. Julia believes a sling could be fashioned out of the same silk as your dress, if necessary.”

“She’s worried about matching my sling to my wedding dress.”

“No,” Rule said, “she wanted to be sure you wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve also taken calls from your sisters, Madame Yu, Detective James, Deputy Beck, one Rho, three Lu Nuncios, Steve Timms, Cullen, Ida, and a couple others. You know that Cynna’s sequestered with the Rhej right now. She may not yet know about the shooting.”

“Right.” It made Lily feel funny that so many people had called to check on her. Funny, but good. “Grandmother used the phone?”

“She had instructions for me.”

Lily grinned. “I’ll bet. I hope her instructions agree with Nettie’s. I wouldn’t want to annoy either one of them.”

“They’re largely congruent. While Nettie didn’t prescribe tea, I don’t think she’d object. I’m afraid I had to tell everyone that flowers and other delivered items weren’t appropriate, due to security.”

She would have done the same thing if she’d been arranging security for a potential target. It was weird being that potential target. “You’re assuming the shooter is an ongoing threat rather than a one-off, an opportunistic attack. Did the locals talk to the concierge?”

“The locals aren’t talking to me. However, Sjorensen intends to …” His phone chimed. He checked the screen and grimaced apologetically. “It’s Alex. I’d better take it.”

“Sure.” Why did that make her memory itch? Oh, yeah. He’d taken a call from Isen while they were on the plane. One he hadn’t told her about.

This call was about the memorial. The firnam, they called it. She tried to listen, but couldn’t. Her mind filled with the image she couldn’t get rid of: LeBron’s head again, the bloody mess of it. The missing eye.

It hurt. It hurt so much more than her arm, and in a place painkillers couldn’t reach. Once Rule disconnected, she distracted herself by asking about the other call she’d been reminded of. “On the flight out here, your father called you on my phone and didn’t want me to know what it was about. You said you’d hold off. Have you held off enough yet?”

“ Actually, I was planning to tell you tonight if you seemed up to listening to a puzzling tale.”

A puzzle sounded like an excellent idea. More distraction. “I’m up for it.”

“In a moment. This is not a Leidolf matter, so … ah, your coffee is here.”

So was his coffee and the food. Lily didn’t have much appetite, but the soup was chicken noodle, which was what her mother had always given them when they were sick, so eating it seemed right. Tasted pretty good, too. “Okay,” she said, putting her almost-empty bowl aside to sip coffee. “You’ve eaten, I’ve eaten. Puzzle me.”

First Rule asked the guards to take up positions farther from the door. Clearly he didn’t want them overhearing. By the time he returned and took her hand, Lily’s curiosity would have kept her awake even without the caffeine.

Even after sending the guards out of earshot, Rule kept his voice low. “I delayed telling you at Benedict’s request. This event is intensely personal, but it is also clan business.” He paused. “The Lady has Chosen for Benedict.”

“Has … you mean now? Again?” Lily knew almost nothing about Benedict’s Chosen, save that Claire had died many years ago and Benedict had gone half mad with grief.

He nodded. “That itself is a mystery. Never has a lupus been gifted twice with a Chosen. Nor am I aware of a time when a single clan held two Chosens. But the manner of her arrival in his life is a puzzle, also.”

There was a time for questions, and a time to let your witness—or your friend and lover and bonded mate—talk. Lily didn’t interrupt. She didn’t make notes, either. Her fingers twitched a couple times, but it was the fingers on her right hand. Which she couldn’t use, dammit.

Didn’t matter right now, though. You didn’t write down anything about the mate bond. Ever.

So she lined her questions up mentally. When he finished, she hit the first one. “She was at Friar’s two nights ago, then at Clanhome last night. At Clanhome she had some kind of potions with her, but by the time Benedict spotted her, the vials were empty. She says one of them was designed to conceal her scent. She won’t say what the other one did. Cullen’s checking the vials, I guess?”

“He will. Isen wanted him to prepare a truth charm first.”

“Did she have potions with her at Friar’s?”

“I don’t know. Benedict didn’t search her that night.”

“No, but he was wolf at the time, right? What did he smell?”

“I don’t know,” Rule repeated, and spread his hands. “I didn’t ask. I don’t think Isen did, either. I begin to think we should have told you earlier.”

“Of course you should. Benedict’s having a hard time with this?”

“Had she not shown up again, I don’t know what would have happened. He was refusing to look for her. He’s not himself, not thinking clearly.”

“Hmm. Well, if he sniffs the containers the potions were in, maybe he could tell if he’d smelled anything like them the night before, at Friar’s. Might be good to know if she was delivering potions there, too. Or if she got them there.”

“I suspect he could.” Rule shook his head. “Benedict is too distracted to have thought of this, but Isen or I should have.”

Lily suspected the lupi were more focused on the Lady aspect of this business than she was. That would be of absorbing importance to them. It probably was important, too, but she had a snowball’s chance in hell of figuring out what the Lady had in mind, so she ignored that in favor of what she might be able to figure out. “You’ve been distracted yourself, and Isen is smart as hell, but he’s not a cop.” She drummed her fingers on her leg. “They’ve persuaded her to stay at Clanhome by threatening to tell the cops about her.”

“Yes. They hope to learn more about her, of course, but also Isen wants to keep her near Benedict. You know what can happen if the bond is stretched beyond its limits.”

She damned sure did, and the bond was at its most restrictive when it was new. “Benedict really isn’t thinking straight. She has to be told.”

“If anyone can move my stubborn brother off whatever high ground he thinks he’s defending, it’s our father.”

“True.” Lily considered the nature of the threat Isen had used to keep the intruder at Clanhome. Even people who weren’t bad guys could be wary of involving the police, but this woman’s aversion seemed excessive. She was up to something. Of course, sneaking onto both Friar’s and Nokolai’s property already suggested that. “She claimed that Friar is clairaudient?”

“She was quite definite about it, but wouldn’t say how she knew.”

“Hmm.” Lily had long suspected Friar had a Gift of some sort, but so far she’d been unable to touch him and find out. “That’s a rare Gift, and a hard one to train, I’m told. Go over what they know about her again.”

“According to Isen, she looks to be around thirty. She wears glasses. She has a physical impediment of some sort. Her hair is red, long, and curly. She seems to know a lot about lupi, or at least about Nokolai. Cullen’s convinced she’s part-sidhe. Her Gift allows her to hide from others’ perceptions. It doesn’t affect Benedict, of course—”

“Stop there. I don’t get that.”

“The mate bond supersedes all other magic.” Rule smiled and ran his thumb along the side of her hand. “When we first met, it worried you that you couldn’t feel my magic when we touched. You still don’t. Your Gift doesn’t work on me.”

True, though she hadn’t thought of it in quite those terms. “So Benedict’s immune, and that’s why he’s guarding her. She can’t play mind tricks on him. Overusing her Gift makes her pass out?”

He nodded. “So she said, and she did indeed pass out. Nettie examined her and told them not to try to wake her. She called it a natural recuperative trance similar to being in sleep.”

“I take it she and Benedict haven’t, ah, completed the bond yet.” With sex, she meant. The mate bond was cemented the first time the bonded pair had sex—which they’d be really, deeply, wanting to do. “Not with her passed out.”

“I don’t think so, but she’s awake now. When I spoke to Benedict about an hour ago, she was in the shower. Isen plans to resume questioning her over dinner.” Rule glanced at his watch. “Which, on that coast, will be happening soon.”

“Okay, let’s move to impressions—Cullen’s, Benedict’s, Isen’s.”

“I didn’t talk to Benedict long, and didn’t ask for his impression of her. But he thinks she knows more about us than she should. As for Cullen … mostly, he’s excited.”

About the chance to learn new magical stuff, no doubt. “He would be.”

“He’s also suspicious of her motives. That’s typical, if illogical. Obviously she’s not an enemy.”

“Obviously, we don’t know that yet.”

“She’s Lady-touched, Lily. She might be misguided or coerced, so they are being careful. But she can’t be a true enemy.”

“According to you, I’m Lady-touched, too, and I damn near arrested you for murder before I figured things out.”

He smiled. “But you didn’t. Isen called her oddly innocent. Not naïve or ignorant. Innocent. I’m not sure what he means by that.”

Lily wasn’t either. But she was curious. Intensely so. For so long she’d been it, the only one who knew what a mate bond felt like. The only Chosen.

Not literally true, she corrected herself. There was a Chosen in Africa, a member of Mondoyo clan. Lily had never met or spoken to her. Neither had most of the lupi, because the woman didn’t travel or speak English. There’d been a Cynyr Chosen, but that was in Wales, and she’d died at the age of a hundred and three before Lily met Rule.

But other than Lily, there hadn’t been a Chosen in North America since Benedict’s first Chosen died. Now he had another one.

“Okay, so they don’t know her name or where she’s from,” she said, ticking off the obvious. “But you said they’d found her car, so it shouldn’t be hard to—”

“No, we do know her name. Sorry. I thought I told you.” Rule shook his head. “Maybe I caught a touch of avoidance from Benedict. He doesn’t refer to her by name, only as ‘she’ or his charge. It’s an unusual name. Arjenie Fox.”

Lily stared. Could there be two people with that name? “I need my computer. Shit. I need to check … Rule, I know her. I’ve worked with her.” And liked her, dammit. “Arjenie Fox is with the Bureau. Someone in the Bureau tried to kill Ruben.”

Rule’s eyebrows drew down. “It wasn’t her. The timing doesn’t work.”

She brushed that aside. “I know that. But maybe we aren’t talking about a single player here. Ruben’s hit, I’m hit, and Arjenie just happens to show up at both Friar’s place and Clanhome?” She shook her head grimly. “Chosen or not, that’s too damned suspicious. At best, she knows more than she’s telling. At worst, she’s part of it.”