Mortal Ties

FORTY

THE conference room at the FBI’s San Francisco office was small and crowded. The room smelled of clan—Scott, Mike, and Alan were among those at the table—but also of stale coffee, humans, and all the various scents they were so fond of. In addition to cologne, aftershave, and shampoo, Rule smelled six different brands of deodorant. One of them wasn’t working as well as it might.

His wolf did not like it here. It didn’t help that humans were forever closing doors. It was a damn fetish with them. Rule told his wolf to settle, that they were hunting Lily and everyone here was helping and he needed to focus, dammit.

“Stop that,” Madame Yu snapped.

Everyone looked up at her. The man who’d just come in—Agent Smith or something similarly bland—stopped in midstride.

“Stop closing the door,” Madame Yu said. “The air is stale in here.”

“Sure,” Agent Smith said. “No problem.” He swung the door wide open. Everyone else went back to studying their printouts.

Rule made a mental note to buy Madame Yu something foolishly extravagant. He gave her a grateful nod and looked back at his own set of lists.

The California Department of Public Safety had coughed up a list of the owners of cars with license plates ending in LT250, along with their addresses of record and driver’s license numbers. That was on a database. Upon being served with the warrant, the bank had produced a list of every transaction in the last two days. That was a paper list. A very long paper list. It was a busy branch. Rule had gotten a second list from the bank, too—also on paper, but much shorter. That one contained only those transactions involving accounts that had been opened since the sidhe delegation arrived two weeks ago.

They’d been able to eliminate those account holders quickly. No matches. Not even any near misses.

Rule was operating on the assumption the elves had had help acquiring false identities, bank accounts, and renting a condo or house or apartment under their fake IDs. That help had probably come from Friar. They might have been in touch with him well ahead of their arrival. It was also possible one or more of them had been here much longer than two weeks. A few sidhe could cross between realms without a gate. Most of those with that skill were lords, according to Cullen. Most, but not all. Arjenie’s father was able to cross realms.

So they would check older accounts as well. Robert Friar had been recruited by her six years ago, so Rule eliminated accounts more than six years old. That still left them with a very long list.

The data from DPS had been easy enough to import into the Bureau’s computers. They’d tried scanning in the bank’s list, then importing the scanned data. It hadn’t worked. Scanning introduced too many errors. So they were doing it the old-fashioned way, comparing the two lists visually, looking for matches on the names, addresses, or driver’s license numbers.

Cullen was still searching. His copter had refueled twice—and had been detained at the airport the second time. The pilot had to fly so low for Cullen to see the kind of detail he needed that they were breaking some law or another. Rule had applied to Ruben for help, and the airport had released pilot, copter, and Cullen. They were back up again.

Laban was still searching, too, on the ground. They hadn’t found any more traces of elves. It was a big damn haystack.

If “LT250” wasn’t a partial license plate number, they were wasting an enormous amount of time. Time Lily couldn’t afford. Dammit, dammit, dammit…carefully Rule relaxed the hand he’d tightened into a fist atop his copy of the LT250 license plates. He realized he’d scanned most of the current page on autopilot. He could have missed something.

Damn it to hell. He didn’t want to look at lists. Man and wolf, he wanted to act.

He made himself take a slow breath, rolled his shoulders to loosen them—and winced. His wounded shoulder was not finished healing. Had he been able to sleep to speed the process, it would be almost whole again, but—

“Found something,” Mike said.

Rule beat Bergman to Mike’s side, but only by a hair. She’d been closer, but still, she was fast for a human. “Show me.”

“Here.” Mike pointed at a line halfway down one sheet, then at another sheet. “Abraham Brown. Got it on both sheets. Driver’s license number matches, too.”

Jasper sat up eagerly. “What is it? What’s the address?”

“44191 West Crescent,” Bergman said. “Bill, check the map.”

Jasper slumped. “That’s damn near in the bay.”

“He’s right.” A dark-haired man—Bill, presumably—had jumped up to look at a large map of the city pinned to one wall. “44191 would be right around here.” He tapped on the map with one finger.

Bergman gave Rule a sharp look. “You said she wasn’t near the water.”

Rule moved up to look at the map. The spot Bill had his finger on was very near the bay. It was also west of the hotel. Not all that far from the area where Lily had gone looking for Hugo, in fact.

“A lot of warehouses there,” Bill said. “Good place to stash a hostage. I can find out if that address is a warehouse pretty quick.”

“All right. Yes. Do it.” Rule scrubbed a hand through his hair. Was the match a coincidence? It could be. The list of plates ending in LT250 was long, and they were only guessing it was a partial plate number.

Bill did not jump to do what Rule said. He hesitated, looking at his boss.

“It’s west, not east,” Bergman said. “Either your tip was bad, or we’re looking in the wrong direction.”

Rule had told Bergman the truth—that Lily had contacted him through mindspeech, the kind the dragons used, though he’d only received a few words. Much to his surprise, she’d believed him. She had not, however, told her agents that. As far as they were concerned, Rule had received a mysterious tip they were supposed to treat as golden.

“If this isn’t where they’re holding Lily,” he said slowly, “it could still be connected. Maybe Friar used that identity himself before he gave it to one of the elves. It could lead us to him, if not them. We have to check it out.”

She nodded. “Good point. Come on, Bill—you and I will check out Abraham Brown and 44191 West Crescent. The rest of you keep checking your lists.”

“Oh, yes,” he said, looking at his share of those lists with loathing. “We’ll keep checking.”

THERE was nothing but fire. Fire in the tiny flame flickering at the end of a candlewick. Fire stretching from flame to flame, to the heart of flame.…fire, and Lily’s voice.

Am at 1132 North Bretton. There are two groups of sidhe who are both competing and working together. The halfling has taken me and Sean Friar hostage. She will trade me to Robert Friar. She has two elves with her, capabilities unknown. Robert Friar is with the other group, led by Benessarai. He has Adam King. Location unknown. Capabilities unknown. I am at 1132—

Another voice sliced into her monologue, quick and cutting and as cold as the fire was hot: Not now! Send the ghost.

A door slammed shut.

Lily jolted. Blinked in disbelief.

“What?’ Drummond said urgently. “Did you connect? Did he hear you?”

Drummond had fully materialized again. When had he done that? She’d stopped seeing anything but the candle flame some time ago…how long? The chamber music was long since over. She heard Debussy now, the prelude to his Afternoon of a Faun, and she ached all over. She was exhausted. Limp and drained and exhausted. “I reached him. He shut me out.”

Drummond’s scowl came quickly. “He wouldn’t do that. Maybe I don’t like him, but he’d do anything to get to you. There’s no way he’d shut you out.”

“He…oh.” She realized she was speaking out loud and switched. I wasn’t trying to reach Rule. I did manage that once, but it was so short and I couldn’t tell if anything I sent got through. She wouldn’t let me have the toltoi. I needed the toltoi to contact Rule, so I was trying to reach Sam, the black dragon. And I did. And he shut me out. Lily blinked back tears of exhaustion. Not despair, no. It was just that she was so tired. But she wouldn’t cry because the dragon had been her last hope and he wouldn’t listen. Wouldn’t even listen to her.

Drummond came and crouched in front of her. “You can’t give up.”

“I’m not.” She heard how flat her voice sounded, though, and realized she’d forgotten again and spoken out loud.

“Turns out all those assholes who said ‘where there’s life, there’s hope’ were right. Because on this side of the line, you can’t do anything. Not one damn thing. You’re still on the other side of that line. You can do something. Even if it doesn’t work, you can do something. You just have to keep doing something.”

Keep doing something. Yeah, sure, that sounded fine—but what?

She straightened, wincing at how sore her back was. He told me to send the ghost. That would be you. I guess he doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does. You can’t go to Rule. You can’t get more than a couple hundred feet from me.

Drummond didn’t answer.

I can try to reach Rule again. But even “talking” to Drummond felt draining. She’d about used up whatever resource she drew on for mindspeech.

“You said Turner could see me.”

Yeah, some. But you can’t get to him, so how does that—

The walls quit playing Debussy. Alycithin’s lilting voice replaced the music. “Lily, I regret that I must interrupt your mediation. I have heard from Robert Friar. It is time to make the exchange.”

THEY came for Lily with a gun, the SIG Sauer Al had seen earlier. The elf in jeans carried it. Al wanted to punch him so bad his clenched fists were shaking.

“I wish we had had longer to talk,” the halfling said in her beautiful voice. She held an object very familiar to Al—a set of police-issue restraints. “I enjoyed your company. Please put your hands behind your back so I may secure them.”

“What have you done to Sean?”

The other elf—who looked barely strong enough to carry a large sack of dog food—was toting Sean Friar back into the bedroom they’d just left.

“Only a sleep spell. He will be fine.”

She didn’t deserve this. Lily Yu was bright and brave and resourceful. She was a good cop. One of the best, and he had the years on the job to know what the best looked like. She was what he had been…once.

“Put your hands behind your back, please, Lily.”

“Are you out of drugged darts?”

“Robert Friar does not want you drugged.”

“I guess it would take all the fun out of it for him if I weren’t conscious and shaking with fear. Where are we going?”

The halfling was getting impatient. “To Robert Friar.”

Even before Al killed the bitch who’d killed his Sarah, he’d lost some of that shine. The job took it out of you, and he’d gotten hard, cynical, willing to cut corners. Then he lost Sarah, and he went crazy. Maybe he was still crazy, because he couldn’t regret killing Martha Billings. Not exactly. But he hadn’t given the law a chance. He’d decided his need to kill was bigger and more important than anything else. The law hadn’t failed him. He’d failed it. After that, he’d made one bad decision after another.

Lily shook her head. “I mean where in the city. If he is in the city. Will this be a long ride or a short one? How much time do I have left?”

She was still trying to get information. He couldn’t see what good that information would do her, but she was doing something. She hadn’t given up.

“It should take twenty minutes or less to get there. He is in an old warehouse not far from where I captured you. If you do not put your hands behind you back now, I will force you. It would be more dignified to comply.”

“I guess I’m not in a dignified mood.”

Sarah hadn’t deserved to die. Neither did Lily Yu, but Al was even more helpless this time. Condemned to watch it happen. Unable to do anything to stop it. He wanted to bang his head against the wall, but his head would go through the goddamn wall.

Alycithin nodded and said something in her language to the jeans-wearing elf. She handed him the restraints.

Yu tried. She had some moves, too, but the halfling—Al had never seen anything like her. She moved as fast as those damn lupi, and she had the whole package—speed, training, strength. It was over pretty quick, ending with Yu on her stomach on the floor, the halfling straddling her, and the other elf fastening the restraints.

He circled the pair of them, useless and furious and willing to do anything. Anything at all, if only there was something he could do.

The black dragon thought there was.

Send the ghost, he’d told her. Well, Al was the only ghost she had. The dragon had to mean him. He circled the two living people as Alycithin pulled Lily to her feet, unable to stop moving. Maybe the dragon was right. Dragons mostly were, when it came to the woo-woo stuff. Maybe there was something Al could do and he was too stupid to see it. Maybe he was as big a failure as a ghost as he had been as a cop and as a husband. If he—

His ankle brushed against something.

He jumped back. Astonished was way too small a word for what he felt. He hadn’t touched anything since he died. He could sort of feel walls and floors and people, but it wasn’t like touching them. It wasn’t the same at all.

Thin and taut, a glowing cord stretched away from Yu, angling slightly down.

That? That’s what he’d felt, the damn cord that ran between her and Turner? It was thinner than ever, as if it had been stretched way out. Tentatively he approached.

Lily’s gaze darted to him. The halfling was behind her, marching her forward. “You will not be noticed,” Alycithin said. “Do not tire yourself calling out or attempting to draw attention in other ways. Dinalaran, the door, please.”

Al reached out and touched the cord—or tried to. His hand went right through it. Disappointment crashed down so hard he could only stand there, staring. But he’d felt it. It had brushed his ankle. Why couldn’t he feel the damn thing now? He reached out with both hands—and his left hand touched it. Felt it. His left hand, where his wedding ring glowed.

The cord was thinner than a rope and slick. He closed his hand around it. His fingers gripped. They gripped and held on.

What…you doing?

Yu’s mental voice was so faint he’d missed a couple of words. He looked at her. “I’m going to try it. Turner can see me. Maybe I can use this to get to him, let him know you’re being taken to a warehouse.”

Use what?

“Whatever this thing is between the two of you. I can hold it. Maybe I can follow it.” Maybe he’d gotten lost in the gray because it didn’t have landmarks. This—this cord thing—maybe it wouldn’t go away. Maybe he could hold on to it, pull himself along it, even when everything else went to gray.

But he’d better hurry. Once the halfling got Yu in a car, he was going to come apart.

“Don’t call me,” he told her urgently. “If you do, I’ll come back, and I need to try this.” He held onto the cord tightly and started running—out the door and right down into the floor.

He felt both door and floor as he passed through them. Not tactilely, the way he felt the cord. Just a vague sense of compression as if whatever he was composed of now reacted to the mass he passed through. He raced through someone’s living room, through a wall and a hallway, and out of the building entirely. He was still nearly two stories above the ground.

The cord felt strong and stable in his hand. It stretched out straight ahead of him as he ran. It didn’t seem to matter that his feet had nothing below them but air. He grinned, exhilarated. He’d never tried this. When he wanted to move fast, he’d always let himself go misty. But mist didn’t have hands, couldn’t hang on to a cord.

This was fun.

His grin faded as he looked ahead and saw the way buildings, people, everything faded. Only a few yards ahead of him now, the world took on a gray cast. Beyond that…nothing. The cord stretched out and out into the nothing.

He kept running. The world had faded to gray, ghostly shapes, barely seen, when the first vibration shook him.

He hadn’t been fast enough. Lily Yu was in a car, and it was speeding up.

He began to tatter quickly, and as he came apart he felt the pull, as if he had a hook set deep in his soul that was yanking him. Pulling him back toward her. He’d only felt a little tug before, not this deep ripping. His hand started to lose the feel of the cord, lose…

No. He focused everything he had, everything he was, on his hand, on the hand gripping the cord. On the gold of the ring he wore, glowing like the cord still glowed. Even here where all was gray, here in the heart of the nothing, his ring glowed faintly, just like the cord. He couldn’t see anything but his hand, his ring, and a short length of the shining cord. Everything around him was gone. He was gone, except for that hand, but he kept moving even as that hook ripped him.

It hurt. It felt like the hook was ripping open the gut he didn’t have anymore.

He focused even harder on his hand, the one part of him that was still real. That would, by God, stay real. And he kept moving away from Lily Yu.