“I don’t know if this falls within my jurisdiction. By law, magical crimes are those—”
He made a chopping motion with one hand. “You’ll find a way to work it. I don’t care how. I haven’t asked for obedience from you because you weren’t raised to understand the need, but you are Nokolai. You’ll find a way.”
Prickles traveled up her arms. She wanted to agree. She was immune to whatever pull his mantle gave him, yet she wanted to agree. “And if I don’t?”
A glint of humor passed through his eyes. “Oh, I’m not fool enough to threaten you. No, you’ll find a way to make this your case because that’s best for Nokolai—as you’ll understand when you’ve thought on it. And you are Nokolai.”
He turned abruptly and raised his voice to that full-throated bellow. “Nokolai! This is an offense against the clan.” He paused, letting them absorb that. Calling a clan-offense was serious. “Our Chosen will act for me in this, along with my Lu Nuncio. Anyone with information that might help, come forward. Anyone who was close to Seabourne just before the attack—even if you don’t think you can help—come forward. You will not speak of it to each other. Come forward and wait. Children and tenders, go to the Center. Everyone else, go to the south end of the field. Quickly. We need room for the helicopter.”
He turned to Benedict, who’d come up as he was speaking. “Make sure our elders are comfortable.”
Benedict gave a single nod and moved away.
“Does he magically know when you need him?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind. Did you see what happened?”
“No. I was at least twenty yards away, talking with Sybil and Toby.”
Toby. God, she hadn’t thought—“Where is he?”
“With Sybil, of course. She was a tender for thirty years. She’ll take him to the Center with the other kids.”
Guilt washed through her. She shoved it back. No time for that now—but it was just as well she had plenty of help with this parenting business. She wasn’t very good at it yet.
The crowd was moving, most heading for the south end of the field, as instructed, while a few swam against the current to come forward, also as instructed. Isen directed them to wait about twenty feet away.
They were all so orderly—no panic, no one complaining or assuming that Isen couldn’t possibly have meant him. Or her. They scarcely spoke. She felt Rule move up beside her. “It’s kind of eerie.”
“What?”
“Them.” She gestured. “Everyone’s just . . . They’re so calm. Earlier one of them got so excited from watching a dance that he Changed. No one’s Changing now.”
“Isen is drawing heavily on the mantle.” He paused, then added, “They don’t smell calm. They trust him to deal with the situation, but they aren’t calm.”
“Hmm.” Scent-blind, lupi called humans. They had a point. She turned to Rule. “I need to talk to the wits. You can help with that.”
As Lu Nuncio, he’d smell it if they lied—the lupus ones, anyway. According to Rule, lupi couldn’t lie to someone carrying a portion of their clan’s mantle without reeking of guilt.
Rule didn’t respond. He was looking at Cullen, his face blank. Shut down.
Lily realized she was staring, too, watching Cullen’s chest as if her eyes could keep it lifting, ever so slightly, with his breath. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and touched Rule’s arm once. Then moved away.
Keeping Cullen alive wasn’t her job. Nettie and the Rhej were in charge there, and thank God for that. She’d do what she knew. She moved closer and crouched down beside Cynna. “Can you answer a couple questions?”
Cynna nodded without taking her eyes off Cullen.
“You were with Cullen when it happened.”
“Yeah, I—I was standing beside him. Someone came up to congratulate us. I didn’t know him, but Cullen called him Mike. They were talking when he . . . Cullen jerked, then he fell. He just collapsed. I don’t know who was behind us. It was crowded. I didn’t notice.”
Suddenly Cynna gripped Lily’s arm, her fingers digging in. The bones of her face stood out starkly. “You’ll find him. Or her. Whoever did this, you’ll find them.”
In the face of that need, Lily didn’t speak of jurisdictions. “I will. Cullen’s going to make it, Cynna. He’s got too much holding him here. The Rhej and Nettie will hold on to him in their way, but you and the baby—you’ll keep him here, too.”
Cynna jerked out a single nod and looked at Cullen again. One hand went to her belly, rubbing gently. Her lips moved. Lily caught the words, just barely . . . “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
Among her other improbabilities, Cynna was Catholic. Maybe that helped right now. Lily hoped so. She stood.
Twenty or thirty people had collected where Isen told them to. They didn’t talk to one another. They were waiting, as they’d been told.
Lily shook her head, more aware than usual that lupi might look human—but they weren’t. She headed for her witnesses, and had a small shock. One of those waiting so quietly was her sister Beth. Jason the hunk had his arm around her. Lily paused, absorbed that surprise, and asked, “Who’s Mike?”
“Me.” The man who spoke was the skinniest lupus she’d ever seen. Not emaciated, but stringy, and well over six feet tall. His hair was a dusty black, straight and shaggy, his skin a pale caramel. He looked sick.
“Last name?”
“Hemmings.”
“Okay. I need you to come with me, Mike.” But she didn’t move right away, instead glancing behind her.
Rule was coming. “You okay?” she whispered when he reached her.
He made a single brushing-away gesture. “You’re doing your job. In this case it’s my job, too. I’ll need to Change. I can probably tell even in this form if anyone lies, but we need better than ‘probably.’ ” He glanced around. “The food tables. If you want to question people separately, we’ll need some distance so the others won’t overhear.”
“Okay. Good idea. I need one of the guards to do the things I’d have a uniform do—fetch witnesses, mostly. Can you—”
“Of course.” He gestured to the nearest guard, who happened to be Shannon, the youthful-looking redhead, and told him he was needed to help Lily with the witnesses.
Then he pulled off his watch and tucked it in his jeans pocket. Then he Changed.
Lily had watched the Change often enough. She still couldn’t say precisely what she saw. Every time, she thought maybe this time she’d be able to really see the process, but she never did. Not quite.
It wasn’t like the way the movies depicted it, though—an arm sprouting fur and elongating into a leg, a face stretching into a muzzle. Nothing so clear and linear. Nor did she see the same thing a camera recorded. Rule had been caught on TV once when he Changed, and the space his body occupied had simply frizzed into visual static until he was wolf.
It didn’t help that Rule was extremely fast about the business, but her eyes couldn’t track it when she watched other lupi Change, either.
This time she tried watching out of the corner of her eye instead of head-on. Didn’t help. Reality folded itself up, space and flesh bending into places her brain couldn’t follow. Then it snapped back, and a wolf stood beside her. A really large wolf with black and silver fur.
Lily glanced at Cullen—then forced herself to think, dammit, think about what she could do, not what lay outside her scope and skills. She bent to pick up the cutoffs that had fallen from Rule when he put reality on hold, then nodded at Mike and Shannon.
“Let’s go over to the food tables. Shannon, I need my purse.” Her notebook was in it, for one thing. Also her weapon. “It’s in the kitchen at the Center, in the cupboard by the rear door. Can you get that pretty quick, then join us?”