Night Season

CHAPTER SIX

The enchiladas were great. The company was strained due to the elephants at the table.

One elephant was the allusion ban, which Lily and Rule both honored. Cynna didn't know why they showed such restraint, but she was damned glad of it. The other subject they avoided—or tried to—was their opinion of her decision to go to Edge.

Hard to ignore, those elephants. Fortunately, there were other subjects to discuss. Like gnomes.

Rule knew one gnome pretty well. Max was crude, ill-tempered, oversized for his species, and unforgettably ugly. He was also very much Rule's friend. He'd gone to hell with them to rescue Rule—bitching about it all the way, but he'd gone.

"Max won the down payment for his club playing liar's poker," Rule said as he dished himself a second helping. "He's been banned from Vegas because he bluffs so well. To a gnome, lying is an art. I have the idea there are rules, ethical considerations, among his people about lies, but I've never figured them out."

"So we shouldn't take what the Councilor says at face value," Lily said.

"If the gnomes in Edge are anything like the ones here, then no. They'll expect us to lie, too."

Cynna snorted. "No problem. I'm guessing Underass from Commerce sees lying as an art form, too."

Lily grinned. "Underass. You're talking about McClosky, I take it."

"Got it in one."

"The government can and will look out for itself," Rule said. "You have to do the same. Just because the gnome says your father's in Edge doesn't make it so. He knew the man's name, yes. But he also knew Lily's name, and he didn't learn that from Daniel Weaver."

"He has a wedding ring with my mother's pattern on it."

"Cynna." Lily touched her hand. "That suggests Daniel Weaver—or his ring—was once in Edge. It doesn't prove he's there now."

All in all, it was a relief to close their front door behind her.

The air was cold and still. Cynna grabbed a lungful and held it in, hoping to quiet the jitters. Somewhere nearby a dog was barking. Somewhere even closer a lupus was watching her, though she couldn't see him. Rule's father had decreed that he'd be guarded from now on, and he'd spoken as Rho. Cynna didn't have to see the guard to know he was around.

She stuffed her hands in her pockets and grimaced. Dammit. She'd forgotten all about the coat. She hadn't thanked Rule, who didn't even know he'd bought it for her. Lily had left that out of her briefing.

Shit, she still owed Lily for the slacks and sweater she was wearing. She'd forgotten to ask how much they'd cost.

She wasn't going back inside to find out. Not tonight.

Her government-issue Ford was parked at the curb. She didn't go there. "Tell them I went for a walk," she told the unseen guard. She dropped her keys in her bag, slung the strap over her head so that it crossed her chest bandolier-style, and started moving.

The new coat was lined and supple and surprisingly warm. The swing of her arms made the leather whisper to her: shh, shh, shh. The sound reminded her of tires on pavement or an eraser wiping a blackboard. Motion.

Walking was Cynna's healthiest coping mechanism. She might prefer fighting, but she'd stopped acting on that impulse. Mostly. Anyway, there was no one around to punch tonight unless she headed back and socked Lily, who'd probably put her on her ass pretty fast. A second-degree black belt didn't take shit from a measly brown. And Rule might let her hit him, but that wasn't a fight.

And why was she even thinking these things? She wasn't mad at Lily or Rule… who had not abandoned her. It was stupid, irrational, to feel as if they had.

Dammit. She scowled at the dark street ahead as she stepped off the curb.

There was only the slightest sound behind her for warning. She spun.

Just under six feet of lean, angry man stood an arm's length away, crutches propped under his arms. Messy hair the color of cinnamon without the sugar framed a face sculptors would kill to commit to stone. He wore the same torn jeans and dirty denim jacket he'd had on earlier. The scowl was fresh.

"For God's sake," Cullen snapped, "didn't your mother teach you to look both ways before crossing the street?"

Her heart was pounding like mad. That pissed her off. "I don't remember. She may have, before she finished drinking herself to death."

"Poor little Cynna."

The mockery cut. Guilt rubbed salt in the wound, because Mama hadn't always been a drunk—not the helpless, hopeless kind, anyway. When Cynna was small, there had been vegetables with the boxed mac and cheese. Tucking in at night, sometimes a story. Walks to the park and pushing in the swing.

She turned abruptly and started across the street.

"Oh, stay and fight." He swung along beside her. "You're longing to belt me one. I might even let you."

"Why are you here? Why aren't you at Headquarters drooling over your new spell?"

"I'm stalking you."

That stopped her.

"Isn't that what they call it when a man follows a woman who wants him to get lost?" He freed one hand by tucking the crutch against his side and pushed at the small of her back. "Move it. There's a car coming."

The car was three blocks away and cruising sedately, but the street probably wasn't the best place for this discussion. Cynna started walking again. "Maybe I will belt you one."

Cullen didn't say anything. For the next half-block he didn't say a word, and neither did she. The crutches didn't give him much trouble. He kept up easily.

Strangely, the jittery wires started to loosen. Maybe it was the walking. Maybe it was the inevitability of the conversation they were about to have… dream monsters were supposed to go poof if you turned and faced them, weren't they?

Her monsters weren't going away, but panic had dulled to dread. She'd done plenty of things she dreaded. She could do this, too. Cynna jammed her hands back in her pockets. "You're waiting for me to admit it."

"Yeah. I am."

Cynna dragged in as much air as her lungs would hold, letting it out in a whoosh. "I'm pregnant."

"I know," he said gently.

Oh, dammit, she hated it when he used that voice.

Cynna walked faster, but she couldn't leave her thoughts behind. Or her feelings. Or him. He kept pace beside her, silent.

"It's given to us to know," Cullen had told her that night, their one time together, his eyes shiny with tears. Tears that had scared the crap out of her.

Lupi knew it if a woman they had sex with got pregnant, but this knowledge was one side of a cruel coin. The other side was that it didn't happen often. Magic played hell with procreation, and limited fertility was the reason behind so much about them. Their determined promiscuity, for one. The way a Rho's son became heir, for another. Maybe even their looks. Cullen's physical perfection was an extreme example, but Cynna had never met an ugly lupus. The male of the species—and lupi were all male—were like peacocks or butterflies, their beautiful plumage designed to attract mates.

Mates, plural. Always plural with a lupus.

When Cullen had informed her that she was pregnant, she'd known about only one side of the coin, the low-fertility part. She hadn't believed him about the "special knowledge" side… partly, yeah, because she'd been hip-deep in denial. But dammit, she was on the pill. Cynna might take chances in other areas, but never about birth control. She'd been so sure she couldn't be pregnant.

For the past five weeks she'd waited for her period to show up. Finally she'd bought the damn test. "You're happy about it," she said, bitter.

"Happy is such a thin word… Cynna." He moved in front of her, stacked his crutches against his side and gripped her shoulders in both hands. "This changes everything for me, too. Everything."

"But you wanted this. You wanted a child. You said you'd given up hoping."

"Yes." He dropped his hands. "After so many years… ah, I'm older than I look."

"I figured that." Another top-secret bit of lupus lore: they aged much more slowly than humans. "You can shock me with your true age later. Better believe I'll ask, but not now."

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know. God, how could I know?" She threw up her hands, her voice rising. "Until this morning I didn't believe it. Even when I saw the tester, I couldn't believe it. What could God be thinking? I've got no fucking business raising a kid. I don't want to raise a kid!"

That truth slipped out and hung there between them: she didn't want his child-to-be. Cynna felt queasy. She put her hand on her stomach. Something was growing in there right this second.

"What are you going to do?" he repeated.

His eyes burned into hers. No, they just seemed brighter than usual because all the color had been sucked from his face. She stared at him as, slowly, she understood what he meant. "Cullen, I'm Catholic. You know that. I mean, I'm pro-choice because everyone isn't Catholic, so they should make their own decisions, but I'm Catholic."

"You take the pill. You have sex when you want to. Those aren't exactly Catholic beliefs. Are you saying that—"

"Yes. Yes, I am." She took a step toward him. He was hurting. It had to be bad, because Cullen never let anyone see him hurt or afraid or vulnerable. "I don't know what I'm going to do, but not abortion. That's out."

His crutches clattered to the ground. He grabbed her and held on tight.

Too tight. "Hey! I like to breathe!"

"Shut up." But his arms loosened. He didn't top her five-foot-ten by much; when he leaned his cheek against her hair, his breath stirred it. "You don't make sense. I don't understand you."

"Me, neither. But about this… see, if sex is a mistake, it's one that just affects the adults making that decision. So maybe the Church is right, maybe I'm right, but whichever way it falls out, no biggie. But abortion…"

Her voice trailed off. "We're talking about babies here. Not that I think what's inside me is a baby, not yet, but that's where it's headed, isn't it? I'm not up to making that decision. I don't understand enough about right and wrong. That's one of the reasons I went to the Church in the first place—for help with the big decisions."

His voice was dry. "And the pill? Does that fall in the 'no biggie' category?"

She snorted. "You may have noticed that the Pope's a guy? Not married, not fooling around… I don't see how he gets a vote."

"You don't buy the whole papal infallibility bit?"

"See, that's a funny thing. Papal infallibility doesn't mean popes are perfect or right about everything. Well, just look at the history of the Church—people being burned for witchcraft or put on the rack for saying the world was round? That's not right. It's more that they're supposed to be right about what the Church teaches, and not everyone agrees when a particular teaching is infallible. The last one everyone is sure of was issued in 1952, about the assumption of Mary."

Cullen rested his hands at her waist and looked at her, a smile playing on his lips. He was amused, or wanted to be. "You've given this some study."

"If you come to the Church as an adult, you have to think things over, understand what you're agreeing to." She grimaced. "Or not agreeing with. Father Jacobs says I'm a cafeteria Catholic."

His mouth crooked up. "Picking out the beliefs you like, leaving the others on the buffet?"

She nodded. "But Father Michaels says that's okay, as long as I keep thinking about the rest of it. Maybe I'm convinced I don't like fish, or won't care for the sauce it's in, but I should try it sometime, you know?"

"You've got a priest. Two priests." Cullen shook his head. "It boggles the brain."

"That's what Rule says, too. Is your foot okay? Can we walk some more?"

He answered by bending to pick up his crutches. "You aren't in this alone, you know."

By "this" he meant the pregnancy. The word made ripples in her. She started moving. "I get that."

"You don't have to raise the child. You could give it to me."

Not ripples this time—big, dizzy waves. "I'm not ready to decide. I'm barely able to say… to say 'pregnant.' I can't make decisions yet."

"Just so you know that option is part of this particular buffet."

She didn't say anything until they reached the next street. No cars. She started across. "You said 'it.' You don't know the sex?"

"For that you'll need ultrasound."

When? When did the growth inside her become enough of a baby to have a sex? She had no idea. She knew nothing about babies—carrying them, bearing them, raising them.

She knew one thing, though. If this one was a boy, it would be a lupus. It would Change when it was old enough, but that was okay because it would have a clan, people who cared about it, knew how to help it through the Change. But… "If it's a girl, it will still be Nokolai, right?"

"Yes."

There was such satisfaction in his voice. Because his child wouldn't be clanless, as he had been? Maybe because he would give his adoptive clan something wonderful. Lupi were nuts about babies.

All of the above, Cynna decided. And that was all she was ready to decide tonight. She'd had enough shocks for one day—that damned purple color in the tester window, the arrival of Gan and the delegation, the news about her father…

My father

. Two words that had never held much meaning for her. Even in prayers it was "Our Father," not "my father." Now… uh-oh. Thinking again, and not the productive kind. "So how come you aren't still at Headquarters'? Don't tell me you left a shiny new spell just to stalk me."

"Don't tell me you aren't curious about that shiny new spell."

"Now that you mention it… how's it sourced?"

He grinned. "Outside the caster."

The law defined sorcery as magic sourced outside the spellcaster—which was, as Cullen often said, a nice blend of stupidity and blinding ignorance. Even Wiccans drew on power from other sources, though the plants and gems they used didn't have much juice. "Think Congress will hold an emergency session to rewrite the law?"

"They'll come up with some way around it. They want this too much."

Trade with another realm… yeah, that was huge. Cynna didn't figure it could be kept quiet much longer. "What kind of spell is it?"

"Full draw."

That meant it drew on all four elements. "Balanced draw?" The more balanced the draw from the elements, the harder the spell, because spellcasters weren't themselves balanced. Cullen found Fire ridiculously easy and was good with both Water and Earth, not so good with Air. Cynna aced Air, did okay with Earth, and struggled with Water and Fire.

"It's ley line magic."

"Jesus!" She immediately felt guilty and apologized to God for using His son's name that way. She was trying to break herself of the habit. "Definitely a balanced draw, then. Uh… have you ever worked a ley line spell?"

"A few times. I'll in-blood the elements."

"That's—"

"The best way I know to do it."

Ley lines carried magic throughout the Earth, but as that magic left the nodes where it originated, it lost its uncolored intensity, splitting into the rainbow colors of the elements. That's why you had to use a balanced, full-draw invocation to tap one. In-blooding was a risky way to achieve balance, but so was every other technique if you were dealing with ley line energy. After a moment Cynna nodded. "You'd know what works best for you, I guess."

"I'm weak in Air. You're strong there. Keep an eye on me after the in-blooding. If I get distracted and lose the balance, I'll probably stop breathing. Remind me."

"I'll do that. What about the rest of the spell?"

He shrugged. "There are material components for the invocation. The list he gave me is interesting in one way—Edge must be Earthlike in some ways if we have the same herbs."

"Unlike Dis."

"Right. But he's not revealing more without payment. When I left, negotiations had stalled while they flew in some gnome expert who lived in the underways for a few years."

"So you're waiting for the government to pay this Councilor dude for his spell."

He tilted his head. "You're thinking that's why I left to stalk you—that I'd still be there if I had the whole spell to play with. You're wrong."

"And you are not telepathic." A good guesser, maybe. Uncomfortably good.

"This baby means more to me than the spell. More than anything."

It was the way he said it—matter-of-factly, no dramatics—that made her eyes water. Or maybe her hormones were already crazy. She took a second to answer so she could be sure her voice didn't wobble. "That's good. Every kid should have someone who puts him first."

"Did you?"

"Shut up, Cullen."

"For me it was my mother. She wasn't exactly June Cleaver, but she loved me all the way."

He'd started this, hadn't he? That made it okay to ask one of the questions she'd wondered about. "What about your father? Lupi are supposed to be nuts for children."

"Oh, sure, when I was a kid… but it turned out that he loved what he wanted me to be. Not what I was."

"A sorcerer."

"He thought I could give it up. He didn't…" The breath he drew was ragged. "He didn't fight for me. When the Rhej said I couldn't remain both Etorri and sorcerer, he didn't argue with her or the others. He argued with me. He fought me, not them. When I couldn't give up so much of what I am… after the seco, he didn't speak to me again."

"Jesus." Etorri was his former clan. The seco must be some kind of kick-him-out ceremony. Never to speak to him again after he'd lost his clan… that was a bigger betrayal than her own father's disappearance. Cullen had grown up believing the man loved him. "Never?"

He swiped a hand through the air, brushing away the past and her question. "I don't want any damned sympathy. I want you to know that it doesn't matter to me what this baby is—boy or girl, stupid or clever, clumsy, Gifted, whatever. It doesn't matter. I'm on his side."

"Or hers."

"Or hers. I don't want to just see her for a month or two in the summer, either. I want to be part of my child's life right from the start." His voice hardened. "I will be part of its life."

Did he think that things would have been different if his father had been a bigger part of his life? "How much did you stay with your father?"

"Point for Cynna." He licked his index finger and drew a 1 in the air. The numeral glowed faintly, then faded. "Summers, for a month. He lived in Canada. Mum and I lived in England."

"I thought I caught a bit of an accent. How long have you—"

"Cynna." He stopped and looked at her. "You're trying to steer the talk to me so you don't have to talk abut the baby."

"Well, yeah. Of course."

A smile tilted one side of his mouth and bled into his eyes. "Your turn. Did you… damn!" His phone was beeping. He pulled it from its holster on his belt and glanced at the screen. "It's just Timms."

"You still staying with him?"

"Yeah. He's okay. Doesn't bother me much." He frowned at the phone in his hand. "Doesn't call me much, either. Doesn't call me at all."

"Maybe you should answer it."

For some reason, that seemed to be a major decision, but finally Cullen shrugged and held the phone to his ear. "You better not be calling to ask me to bring a loaf of bread home." A long pause. "She said what? Shit! No, you handled it right… Yeah, tell me about it… Well, you were there. Did she… no? Now that's interesting… I will. With Rule, probably. Thanks." He disconnected with a scowl.

"What? What is it?"

"A reporter from the Post has called him twice, asking for to talk to his 'stripper friend.' Asking if I'm really a lupus. She's camped out across the street from Timms's place now."