“I do not! God, where is all this coming from?”
“You need to find out why you want to marry me. I had to come to my own understanding of marriage. I know why I want this. Why I want your ring on my finger, and mine on yours.”
“I agreed because I love you, you damned idiot!”
“You do, yes, but you agreed to marry me because I pushed.” He’d known that at the time. He didn’t regret it. But he still hit the brakes harder than necessary as he pulled into a parking space at the back of the visitors’ parking lot. “You agreed because marriage is what you’re expected to do. You don’t have a clue why you want it for yourself.”
“Thanks for the psychoanalysis. If you’re through—”
“Not quite. You aren’t comfortable without reasons, without knowing the what, when, and why of things. You need to figure out why you’re marrying me.”
“Sure. Fine. In my spare time, in between saving the city and wringing your neck, I’ll figure that out and get back to you about it.” She threw the door open and grabbed her laptop. “I’m getting another car, and it’s more efficient for us to split up, so you don’t have to hang around.”
He knew when he’d been dismissed. It infuriated him. He’d meant to stay with her. She’d intended that, too. But maybe they’d best cool down separately. “Fine. I’ll be at the hospital. I need to arrange for Cullen to be moved.”
“Right.” She slammed the door.
Rule pulled out of the parking space without screeching the tires. He allowed himself one long glance at the front of the parking lot, where a burly, dark-skinned man in khakis leaned against a sheriff’s car.
Deputy Cody Beck.
Rule did not stamp down on the accelerator when he left the parking lot. He was not a hormonally impaired adolescent.
But he wanted to.
TWENTY-TWO
HE was calling himself Johnny Deng these days. He liked the juxtaposition of East and West, and Johnny was a friendly name, much more so than John. He considered himself a friendly man.
Over the years he had had many names. He often used one of the characters from his original name in some form, for it is good to remember one’s roots. Often, but not always. His current surname spoke of those origins only in the most general way.
At times he missed China, but it wasn’t the China of today he missed, so he didn’t indulge in nostalgia often. No point in making himself unhappy, was there?
He’d liked Europe. They had some appreciation for the past there, and the open borders and jumbled web of law enforcement agencies had made it easy to engage in his trade. But his beloved could not be happy in Europe while her enemies lived and prospered in the U.S. When the Turning hit and the level of magic began to increase, she had needed to put her plans in motion.
He didn’t begrudge moving here. There was much to appreciate about the U.S. and California and the modern world. He loved video games, especially Grand Theft Auto. While he might have preferred San Francisco to San Diego, there were enough people here to feed his beloved, even now when she remained attenuated. There was a large enough Asian population for him to blend in, and he could make use of the established gangs. His profession gave him an in there.
If the public transportation wasn’t up to the standards of London or Paris, it was adequate to his needs today. There was a bus stop right at the hospital, though he did have to make two changes to get there.
When the bus slowed to a stop he climbed on board carrying what he needed in a white grocery sack. After some consideration, he’d chosen to play it safe. His target had already confounded him once, proving resistant to both knife and spell. He couldn’t assume his other spells would work on lupi as beautifully as they worked on humans. Nor could he assume the sorcerer was too unwell to set proper wards. He ought to be—but then, he ought to be dead, too.
He purchased a day pass from the driver and took a seat. The bus was crowded, and the woman sitting beside him wanted to chat about the weather. Johnny agreed that it was very hot, then took out his phone with an apology and pretended to make some calls.
It was all very well to be friendly, but it would not do to be memorable.
Besides, the woman was too tall. He didn’t like tall women. Once the city was his, he wouldn’t allow any woman over five foot three in his presence. He’d considered doing the same with men above a certain height, but that wasn’t practical. He accepted that some of his subordinates would be larger than he.
Johnny prided himself on his practicality. Practicality, patience, and tolerance—those were his chief virtues. He did not, after all, become angry at the woman for being tall. Poor thing, she couldn’t help her height. Instead he cheerfully anticipated the day when women of her excessive inches would not be part of his daily life.
But then, he was a modest man. How could a man achieve success if he did not understand his limits? He knew, for example, that he was not unusually bright or brave. Neither was he stupid or a coward. When he was young, he had thought one must be one or the other—bright or stupid, brave or cowardly. Now, he knew those were poles—signposts, one might say—at either end of long paths. Most people fell somewhere between those signposts, rather than at one end or the other. One might move slightly closer to one signpost or the other as life proceeded, but one would not greatly alter one’s natural position.
He also understood that he was exceptional in two ways. Some quirk of ancestry had gifted him with the ability to see and use magic. Obviously, sorcery was both rare and valuable, but he took no credit for possessing this skill, just as he laid no blame upon himself for lacking great intelligence. He had not achieved the one nor failed at the other. He had simply been born as he was.
Johnny’s other exceptional trait was less obvious—indeed, it was invisible to most people, and was commonly held to be twisted or perverse. A limited judgment, of course, but most people were sadly limited. They wanted good and evil painted in black and white so they knew what was what. Very few grasped the essential elasticity of those qualities. Moral behavior was contingent, always contingent, upon circumstances.
This should be obvious to historians, if not to the dreaming majority. In how many ages and cultures had it been considered acceptable, even correct, to torture one’s enemies? In some cultures the eating of animal flesh was abhorred; in others, the hunter was elevated. And how many variations existed on proper sexual behavior?
Yet people clung to the idea that some acts were inherently good and performing them made one good. Other acts were inherently evil, committed only by evil persons.
And wasn’t English a clever tongue in some ways? This thought had come to Johnny many times since he learned the language, and it never failed to amuse him. One committed to evil, not good; good was simply a performance. Acting as if you were good might make it so, at least in the eyes of others.
But men are always more comfortable thinking themselves like their fellows. Even now, with the fascinating things they were learning about the brain, scientists persisted in viewing abnormalities in the brain as flaws, failures, a problem to be fixed.
Johnny was naturally curious about such things, given the nature of his second exceptional trait. He had read many popularized accounts of brain research and psychology. Happily, he’d been able to conclude he was not what experts called a psychopath. Whatever might be wired differently in his brain, it didn’t prevent him from making meaningful connections with others. Clearly he had a deep and loving connection with his beloved.
Psychopaths were also said to lack empathy. That was certainly not true of him. How could he take such pleasure in giving or receiving pain if he were unable to sense the feelings of others?