Mortal Sins

THIRTEEN

THE sharks were circling when Lily pulled to a stop three doors down from the Asteglio house. The press had taken all the closer parking.

But reporters weren’t the only ones on Mrs. Asteglio’s grass. A gaggle of teenagers, several women, a young man holding a toddler on one hip, and assorted sizes of children filled any gaps between cameras, microphone wielders, and the rumpled suits of the print press.

Lily kept her “no comment’s” polite as she threaded her way past outthrust microphones to the semi-safety of the porch. Someone must have threatened them, or they’d have been banging on the door.

The door opened before she could touch the knob. She slid inside, and Rule closed it on the shouted questions.

He was looking especially magnificent. He’d changed into his usual black—black dress slacks, black silk-blend shirt. He wore a pretty dark expression, too, though his voice was mild. “I did say you weren’t to come.”

“I don’t mind well, do I? How’d you get the sharks to stay away from the door?”

“Anyone who comes up on the porch will be asked to leave the property entirely—and so will not be included in the interview I grant the rest.”

“You’re mean. I like that.”

“On the phone you mentioned a problem with the investigation.”

“I’ll fill you in later.” She glanced around.

The foyer opened on the left to the stairs; at the rear to the kitchen; and on the right to a living room that held two sofas and an upright piano. Mrs. Asteglio stood beside the large picture window backing one of the sofas, glaring out at the invaders on her lawn. She was a lanky woman a little over Lily’s height with gray hair cropped no-nonsense short and pampered skin. Lily had never seen her without makeup and pretty pink fingernails. Today she wore robin’s egg blue slacks with a button-down shirt in a gingham check.

Toby stood a few steps behind Rule, his chin held at a stubborn angle that reminded her of his grandfather, Isen. His eyes were very much Rule’s, though—dark, liquid, hinting at secrets, with the same dramatic eyebrows.

She smiled at him. “Hey, there.”

“Hi, Lily. Tell Dad this is my business, too.”

Lily glanced at Rule, eyebrows lifted, but before he could respond, Mrs. Asteglio announced, “I’m going to go out there and tell them all to go away. They can’t come on private property. Those journalists”—she made the word sound like a curse—“and my neighbors, too, who ought to be ashamed of themselves.”

Rule shook his head. “Your neighbors might leave, but the press will just camp out on the sidewalk and street. The best way to be rid of them is to give them a little of what they want. I’m not the biggest story here, so if I give them a few sound bites, they’ll go back to pestering Lily and the sheriff.”

“And me,” Toby said. “I’ve got sound bites, too.”

“You can just forget that notion, young man,” Mrs. Asteglio told him firmly.

“I need to,” he insisted. “It’s clan business.”

The older woman huffed out a breath. “It’s my grass they’re trampling, my family they want to gossip about, and my daughter who told them about—oh, about your father, and the hearing. Things that should be private. That makes it my business.”

“But Grammy—”

“You want to see yourself on television, but you don’t realize what it would be like, so it’s up to the adults in your life to do what’s right for you. If . . . Rats!”

“Rats” was the strongest expletive Lily had ever heard from the older woman. This time it came in response to the trill of a phone. At least Lily supposed that’s what it was—it sounded like an electronic bird.

“Don’t answer it,” Rule said.

Mrs. Asteglio’s lips tightened to near invisibility as she turned away to delve into her purse, which sat in its usual place beside the couch. “Oh, I’ll answer. That’s my daughter’s ring tone, and she has some explaining to do.”

Lily wanted to grab the phone and ask her own questions, but throttled back that unhelpful impulse. She turned to Toby. “So you want to go talk to the reporters.”

“Lily.” Rule’s voice was as slick and hard as ice. “Don’t meddle.”

Her head jerked back. Where the hell did that come from? “You’d better take a deep breath and shove that attitude back down.”

The hardness dropped away, leaving his face oddly blank. “You’re right. You’re right. I don’t know . . .” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Hell, I’ve got to do better.”

She didn’t know what he meant. Better at sharing the parenting of his son? He’d been doing that all along, though with Toby’s grandmother, not with Lily. But this wasn’t the time to ask.

It was the time for another question. She looked at Toby. “Toby, why do you want to talk to the reporters? If you do it because you’re mad at your mom and want to get back at her, that’s likely to backfire.”

“That’s not it! Well, not . . .” He hit that word and stumbled, picking up again more slowly. “Not much of it, anyway. I am mad. Why’d she have to tell her reporter friends and not even let us know she told them?”

“I don’t know.”

He gave a little shrug, denying that it mattered when it obviously did. “Well, anyway, even before you called, I was telling Dad I ought to talk to the reporters, too. Or trying to tell him.” He shot Rule a look chock-full of early-onset preteen resentment. “People don’t think about us lupi being kids because the clans’ kids have always been hidden away to keep us safe. Maybe that’s how things used to have to be, but everything’s changing now. And—and I don’t want them making stuff up about me. I want to tell them the truth so they can’t do that.”

The twin slashes of Rule’s eyebrows drew down. “Unfortunately, telling the truth doesn’t stop others from making stuff up and reporters from repeating it. It’s my responsibility to represent us to the press, not yours. And I think that’s enough discussion of the subject.”

Toby tilted his head back to stare up at his father. “Are you being my dad or my Lu Nuncio? ’Cause it feels like you’re pushing at me to agree, and that’s . . .” He stopped, darting a glance at his grandmother.

Rule looked taken aback. “Either role requires your obedience.”

“Rule.” Lily put a hand on his arm. “Talk to me a minute, okay? In the other room.”

His eyes met hers, and an echo of the first time their gazes locked rippled through her—the click, the falling, the sensation of utter change when the mate bond had dropped into place. She blinked, and once more they were just eyes. Beautiful and familiar eyes the color of bitter chocolate, filled now with a mix of exasperation and rue.

“If you wish,” he said, “but let’s make it quick.”

She hoped it would be quick. She had multiple murders to investigate and was fresh out of suspects—unless you counted Cullen’s hypothetical out-realm being.

Here there be dragons, indeed. Problem was, dragons had turned out to be real.

Rule headed for the kitchen. Lily followed, trying to sort impressions and puzzlement into sense, into words. Something was eating at Rule. Of course, he had the whole alpha, prince-of-his-people thing going, which made him a tad autocratic at times. But now . . . what, exactly, was bothering her about his reaction?

He went straight to the coffeepot. “Want a cup?”

“Did you make it?” At his nod she said, “Sure. I didn’t get any of the good stuff earlier.”

He poured for her first and handed her the mug. “I take it you disagree with my decision.”

“I don’t understand it.” She brought the mug up to her face and breathed in the aroma, her eyes closing briefly. When she opened them and sipped, she saw a familiar expression on his face. “Hey. Not now.”

“Can I help it if watching you enjoy coffee turns me on?” His smile turned wry as he brought his own mug up to sip and leaned back against the counter. “I apologize for my comment earlier. It was uncalled for, but . . . I thought we were agreed about protecting Toby from the press. Your question to him took me by surprise, and I responded poorly.”

That was it. That’s what was bothering her. Rule never objected to questions. He didn’t always answer them, but he didn’t object to them. “We were agreed, but that was before the press found out about him. It was also before we knew Toby wanted a chance to tell his side of things. The situation’s changed, but your decision hasn’t. Why not?”

“Dammit, Lily, I’m not using my son for PR! He’s too young. Someday he’ll have to . . . but that’s years away. I’ll not have him used.”

“Yet he wants to do this,” she said mildly. “Is it using him if it’s his idea?”

“Is it his idea?” Rule’s expression darkened. “My father wanted this all along. He wanted Toby in front of the cameras, talking about how much he wants to live with me. Great publicity for us, paves the way for other lupi who want the courts to recognize their rights. I’ll bet he’s been talking to Toby. I should have seen that. He put this idea in Toby’s head.”

Ah, now she understood. “Grandmother says that parents are always trying to raise themselves all over again, repair the things their own parents did wrong.” Grandmother said it in Chinese, and more eloquently. But that’s what she meant.

“Your grandmother is a remarkable woman.” Rule was polite. He was always polite with Grandmother, whether she was present or not. “But does that have anything to do with the subject?”

“Maybe you’re doing what you wish someone could have done for you when you were small. But Toby isn’t you.”

Rule’s gaze shifted away. He sipped his coffee, hooded eyes holding his thoughts in. After a long silence he sighed. “What do you suggest?”

“If Mrs. Asteglio is willing, why don’t we all go out together? You make a brief statement and control the flow of questions, pick what Toby responds to.”

“I dislike it when I’m wrong.”

“Yeah. I know what you mean.”

He put his mug down and just stood there, looking at it as if the pretty yellow flowers circling the rim carried an important message. “Why do you think Toby wants to do this so badly? Altruism aside,” he added dryly. “My son is certainly capable of that, but I don’t think it’s his only motive.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“More common sense. Yes, but he may prefer privacy for the discussion. Ask him to come in here, please.”

LILY saw with disturbing clarity at times, Rule thought as he sipped his coffee and waited. He had good reasons for wanting to shield his son, but on a deep and foolish level she was right. He’d been trying to shield the boy he once was, as well.

Not that he had been thrust in front of the press at Toby’s age. Lupi were still very much in hiding then, passing as human. But his father’s goal had been clear years before anyone believed it would be possible for a lupus to live openly as what he was. From an early age, Rule had known he would someday be the public face for his people. If the Supreme Court hadn’t ruled that lupi in human form were “entitled to and compelled by all the rights and responsibilities of citizenship,” Isen would still have had Rule proclaim himself publicly.

And Rule had been ready to do so. He’d always challenged himself by riding in elevators, on trains and airplanes, teaching himself to handle the fear of small, enclosed places common to most lupi . . . and, he admitted, especially strong in him. He’d done that because he expected to be locked up someday. And he would have been, had the Supreme Court ruling gone against them. He would still have gone public, just as he had, but with the goal of eliciting as much sympathy and airtime as possible when federal agents apprehended him, imprisoned him, and injected him with one of the very few drugs his system couldn’t override: the one that robbed lupi of the Change.

He would have done it because his Rho told him to—and because Isen was right. Lupi could no longer hide themselves from the rest of the world; technology and the sheer press of population growth made that impossible. They had to find a way to live openly and peaceably with humans. For that, they needed to replace fear with sympathy and support.

But it’s one thing for an adult to understand and accept such a necessity. Rule hadn’t wanted his son to grow up feeling shaped for sacrifice.

He grimaced and put down his mug as Toby entered the kitchen, just over four feet of wary defiance cast in a familiar mold. Rule had sometimes wondered if Alicia’s indifference to the child they’d made rose from her inability to see herself in the boy’s face or future. Toby would grow up to assume a second form, one forever denied his mother, and his present form looked nothing like Alicia. Hair, eyes, mouth—all mirrored his father, not his mother. His build was much like Rule’s had been at that age, too, though something in the way he moved—the quick certainty of it, perhaps—reminded Rule of his brother Mick.

The reminder was bittersweet. He and Mick had not been close, being separated by age, experience, and ambition. In the end, Mick had betrayed Rule . . . then died saving him.

The way Toby’s long eyelashes flickered as he swept his gaze around the room was familiar, too, but that trait wasn’t Rule’s alone. Lupi habitually checked out a space when they entered it. They were like cops that way, though their instinct was innate, not acquired.

Toby squared up in front of Rule. “Lily said you wanted to talk to me.”

What he truly wanted was to grab the boy up and swing him around and make him laugh. Toby had a laugh that could lift the world. But this wasn’t the time. “Lily persuaded me to reconsider. As your father, I still believe allowing you to speak to the reporters is a mistake. If it is, however, it’s one you’ll survive and should be allowed to make if you wish.”

Toby’s face lit up. “Then—then you’ve changed your mind?”

“Your father has. Your Lu Nuncio remains undecided, which is why I wished to speak with you privately.”

Understanding touched with hurt flashed through Toby’s eyes, but he didn’t whine, didn’t make his feelings more important than his duty. Rule felt a surge of pride in the boy . . . and wondered if his own father had felt a similar pride when Rule was learning these hard, early lessons. And did that make Isen right in retrospect, or Rule wrong in the present?

Toby swallowed. “You aren’t sure I can represent us right?”

“I don’t know. I need more information. Why do you want this so badly?”

“I told you!”

“You told me one reason. I don’t doubt that it’s true—that you want to do this for our people—yet I believe there’s a more personal reason as well. I need to know that reason. It might affect the way you represent us to the human world.”

Toby looked down and shuffled his feet as if wanting to be somewhere else. “I guess I got to tell you, then. See, it’s like . . . I’ve got friends here, you know? And lots of people I just know, like Mr. Peters that teaches math and Coach Tom in Sunday school, and—and when they hear about me being lupus . . . I thought maybe if they see me on TV, see that I’m still just me, they won’t think I’m a freak or something.”

“Toby.” Rule’s throat burned, making it hard to speak.

“I know,” Toby said earnestly, hopefully. “I know I’m not going to live here anymore, so maybe it shouldn’t matter, but I’ll still visit sometimes, and it’s kind of cool to be on TV. Maybe that will make up for—well, for me being lupus.”

This was the real danger he’d wanted to protect Toby from—the hurt of being different. Of turned backs and threats, insults and closed minds . . . He’d yearned to keep all that from touching his son. And couldn’t.

Rule thought of dozens of things to say—advice about how real friends stand by you, warnings about how little control anyone has over what others think. But what boy listens to such cautions? He settled for ruffling Toby’s hair. “Maybe it will make a difference for some. Maybe not. Either way, your hope for acceptance will do your people no harm.”

He held out his hand. Toby took it. Together they walked back to the living room.

Toby’s grandmother was talking with Lily. She broke off, her gaze going to Rule’s face, then Toby’s. Rule noticed that she’d freshened her lipstick.

She grimaced. “You’re going to let him do it, then. I can’t say I approve, but I suppose I’d best get used to not having the final say.”

“You will always have a say where Toby’s concerned,” Rule said quietly. “Always. I’ve given permission, but if you are adamantly opposed—”

“No. No, it’s not . . .” She sighed. Her eyes held an old ache. “I’ve got too many things poking at me, I guess. Alicia said she didn’t tip the other reporters. She told one man, a friend and coworker, in confidence. He turned out to be less than a friend ought to be.”

Toby’s hand tightened in Rule’s. Rule made himself keep his voice calm. “Did she also explain why she’s here? I understood her lawyer was handling everything for her. Why did she come without letting you know?”

“She said . . . she wants us to meet with her and her lawyer before the hearing. She wouldn’t tell me why.”

Dammit. Dammit all to hell. If Alicia planned to contest his claim now—

Lily touched his arm. “We can discuss that later. Mrs. Asteglio is willing to be part of our little show. Should we all go out together?”

Rule took a breath, let it out slowly. Anger would only trip him up. “I’ll go out first and arrange things. I thought we’d take questions on the porch. The sun’s nearly overhead, which is less than ideal lighting, but the porch is a reassuring setting. It looks like exactly what it is—a comfortable place for a family to relax in a small Southern town.”

Mrs. Asteglio looked sour. She disliked what she considered artifice, he knew, the planned impressions essential to PR. Yet she’d freshened her lipstick, hadn’t she?

“All right, “ Lily said. “Let’s do it. Ah . . . the AP reporter. Ed Eames. If you can throw him anything, that would be good. He’s the one who tipped me.”

“If I throw him something now, everyone gets it. But I’ll keep him in mind.”

“Okay. If you need me to, I can take over at the end, switch them back to the story they came here for, so the rest of you can escape.”

Rule smiled and reached for her hand. “Now there’s real self-sacrifice.”

“You better believe it.”