The lobby was a mess. Firefighters and mud did seem to go together. Even here, where there had been neither fire nor hoses, there were muddy footprints everywhere. Very few people, though. A trio who looked like clerical or administrative workers were clustered behind the admissions desk, talking intently with a firefighter. There was a cop—female, young, in uniform—standing at the door to the stairwell.
No one else. Most notably, no Madame Yu. She must have headed straight upstairs.
“Just as well you and the grandmother get along, I guess, considering you’re going to be family.” James thrust out a hand. “Congratulations.”
Rule shook his hand—and discovered it was pleasing, satisfying in a way he hadn’t expected, to receive this man’s well wishes. “Thank you.”
“I was going to warn you to treat Lily right and all that, but I’d forgotten about the grandmother. I figure you for a man with some sense. You won’t want her upset with you.”
Rule grinned. “No, I won’t.”
“Good.” James nodded firmly, then looked pained. “I’m going to have to go to the wedding, you know.”
“Oh?”
“Camille will expect it. Camille’s my wife. It’s going to be a big deal, isn’t it? Written up in the gossip rags, that sort of thing.”
“I’m afraid so.”
James shook his head mournfully. “Thought so. Tell Lily Camille will make my life hell if she doesn’t get to go.”
“I’ll pass that on.” Rule looked back at the doors. Lily was hurrying their way, her stride as quick and energetic as if she weren’t wilting from the heat. “I’d like a private word with Lily before we go upstairs.”
James’s eyebrows rose. “Sure. I’ll just head up and check out this mysterious wounded sorcerer.”
Rule winced. “I’d appreciate it if you manage not to say that too loudly. Or at all.”
“Heh. Don’t worry about that—I’m good with secrets. Ask Lily. As for heading upstairs, I was having you on. I’ve got to see a man about his dead brother. Tell Lily—no, I’ll tell her myself. Her stuff’s in my car, and her car’s back at Rosa’s. I need to have a word with her to sort that out.” He gave another nod and headed for the doors.
Rule watched as James stopped Lily. They spoke briefly. Lily passed him her keys. Rule did not pace or fidget. But he wanted to.
Patience was a skill he’d acquired. He was usually good at it, though he’d no more begun that way than a pup arrives prepared to wait calmly for its mother’s milk. But patience had its limits. Or rather, he had his limits, and he’d reached them. He wanted to speak with his nadia. Now.
The moment she entered, he indicated this desire by grabbing her hand. The one with his ring on it. He traced it with one finger. “Why now?”
“It’s a bone. Also an apology.”
“It’s a what?”
“T.J. said I should throw Dreyer a bone to distract him. So that’s part of the reason—to give Dreyer a way to get back at me that wouldn’t be as damned stupid as whatever else he might have come up with. He’s the type who has to bite back, so I aimed him where I wanted him to go.”
“You expect him to tell others? To leak it to the press?”
She shrugged. “That’s the idea.”
“He may not. Madame Yu told him not to make trouble.”
She looked appalled all over again. “I didn’t want her to do that.”
“I know,” he said gently. Her conscience pricked her over things that seemed to him pointless, but her discomfort was real. “It will wear off, she said.”
“And when it does, he’s really going to want a chunk of flesh. He won’t know what happened, but he’ll be scared, so he’ll come after me and you and anyone else he can. Rule . . .”
He ran his thumb over her ring. “Yes?”
She sighed and looked down at her hand resting in his. “I should have asked you first. Before I started with the ‘my fiancé’ talk, I mean. I know it matters, all that PR stuff. It annoys me, but you’re the public face for your people, so the image, the spin—they matter. We don’t have time to hold a damned press conference now, so the press will probably get Dreyer’s version first. That might make it harder to spin things the way you’d planned.”
He studied her intently. “I’m flexible, and I’m good at spin. I’ll make it work. You just wanted to distract the captain?”
“The bone was part of it,” she agreed, nodding at their clasped hands as if it were them she addressed, not him. “The other part was the apology. It seemed like the best way to apologize for my foot-dragging was to wear the ring. But you get the words, too.”
Now she looked up. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was an idiot, and I’m sorry I got mad at you for pointing out what I was doing. Or not doing. You were right. Not a hundred percent, but mostly right. I do need to know the why, but I don’t have to . . . I can work on the dress and the wedding stuff while I’m figuring out the why. Because the why isn’t going to change anything. I just need to know it.”
Naturally, he kissed her.
Rule expected her to shove him back. They were in public. She was on duty. She grabbed his shirt in both hands and kissed him as if he were air and she’d been underwater way too long.
Rule wasn’t sure which of them eased back. Probably her. He sure as hell didn’t remember telling his hands to turn loose. Of course, his brain had shut right off, what with all the blood in his body being otherwise occupied, so he might have done any number of things without noticing.
“Me, too,” she said hoarsely. “Oh, God, me, too. But not here. Not for hours, dammit. You could have died.”
He found a little breath, enough to say, “I didn’t.”
“But you could have.”
“A lot of people could have died today, and didn’t.”
“Well, you saved them, didn’t you? And yourself.” She shoved her hair away from her flushed face. “I need to remember that. You’re good at taking care of yourself, even when you’re dealing with a kill-happy sorcerer-assassin who can look like anyone.”
“He can’t. Look like anyone, that is. Not without the Chimei, and he was here without her today. At least that’s what I concluded, and Sam confirmed it.”
“Well,” she said again, and nodded as if he’d handed her an important puzzle piece, “we’d better get upstairs and see what Grandmother has to say. She was hiding. Now she isn’t. We’d better find out why.”
TWENTY-NINE
THE stairwell was not air-conditioned. Or if it was, it was ducted very poorly. Lily gave up and took off her jacket. With all the cops around, the sight of her weapon was unlikely to upset anyone. And if it did, she didn’t care.
“There were actually two fires,” she said as she started up. Rule was behind her. “One on three, one on four, both near the east stairwell. He didn’t want people using that one to escape, because that was his route in and out.”
“I didn’t think there was a fire on the fourth floor. There wasn’t anywhere near as much smoke there as on the third.”
“Hennessey thinks that one went out all by itself. I think our perp put it out once he’d scared people away from that set of stairs. He needed to use that hallway, and he didn’t want to singe his own skin. He didn’t bother to put out the one on three because it wasn’t a threat to him.” It was the one on three that had hurt people.
“Were many killed?” Rule asked.
“Three confirmed. One was on a ventilator when the tech went out. One was being operated on. The third breathed in too much toxic shit, they think. That’s what kills most people in a fire, you know—the smoke. Inhale too much and your airways just close up. Anyway, three more are in critical condition—one is burned badly—and at least a dozen others are being treated for smoke inhalation, but aren’t considered critical. They don’t have a count for how many were adversely affected by the power outage.”