“You trying to dig a new grip into that steering wheel?”
“Hmm? Oh.” He flexed his hands on the wheel, forcing them to relax. “How’s your head?”
“Better.” She gave it a little shake. “A lot better. More than makes sense.”
“You may notice some improvement in your shoulder, too. Nettie left you in sleep for a while after the ritual was over.”
Now her head swiveled sharply. “What do you mean?”
“You know what ‘in sleep’ means.”
“More or less. It’s a healing trance, magically induced. I know she said something about that, but I thought she was just using a term I was familiar with to describe something similar.”
“No, she meant just what she said. You were in sleep.”
“But I couldn’t be! That’s magic, and magic doesn’t affect me.”
So that’s what was bothering her. “Normally she wouldn’t be able to put you in sleep, but for this she was backed by spiritual energies, not magic. Which may have given your healing an extra boost, by the way.”
“But that doesn’t make sense! It’s… I can feel Nettie’s Gift when I touch her, so what she does is magic.”
“What does Nettie’s Gift feel like?” he asked, curious.
She made a vague gesture, palm up. “Sort of like crumbly dirt or fern leaves—basic, earthy, intricate. The point is, she uses magic. Even if she gets it through prayer, it’s still the same stuff.”
“Apparently not, since she was able to put you in sleep.”
She frowned at the glittering worm of taillights ahead. “At first I was thinking… wondering… what if my being a sensitive messed things up? She thought I was clean because no one answered, but maybe my Gift kept her ritual from working. But that doesn’t make sense, either, because she did put me in sleep. Only I don’t see how she could.”
He made a soft, wordless exclamation and reached for her hand. “You’re still worried about it. Lily, there’s no trace of the demonic in you.”
“I know. I know that, and yet I feel something. When I touch my shoulder, there’s still a trace of that orangey texture. The demon did something to me, and I don’t see how it could. 1 need to know that, and I need to know what it did.”
What could he say? He knew she wasn’t tainted, but his certainty was intuitive. She wanted rational.
He tried anyway. “Even if a demon could somehow get behind your shields, or whatever it is that makes you a sensitive—”
“One did.”
“Maybe. You don’t know what that orange feeling means. But even if being a sensitive didn’t protect you, the mate bond would. You’re touched by the Lady.”
At first she didn’t say anything. A quick glance told him she was frowning hard, as if he’d presented her with a delicate knot to unravel. “I realize you believe that,” she said at last. “But Karonski said people of faith were protected. I’m not of your faith, so your Lady’s protection wouldn’t extend to me.”
She was being so careful to sound respectful of his beliefs. It annoyed him. “The Lady is real, Lily. As real as her adversary—and I know you believe in Her existence.”
“The one we can’t name. Right. She’s real enough.” Lily’s fingers drummed an impatient tattoo on the crumpled chiffon covering her thigh. “Stipulating that your Lady is real doesn’t mean that what you believe about Her is fact.”
“We don’t claim to know everything about the Lady, but she’s spoken to the clans many times down through the centuries. We can be fairly confident we’ve got the basics right.”
“Hmm.”
She didn’t even ask. She assumed he was talking about some fuzzy business of prophets and faith where logic need not apply, and she didn’t bother to ask what he meant. “Don’t be so bloody dismissive of anything you didn’t read about in school.”
“There’s a difference between myth and documented history.”
“Our oral history isn’t myth. Whether you believe it or not, when the clans are in danger, the Lady speaks to us or gives us aid in other ways.” Maliciously he added, “She uses one of the Chosen.”
She swiveled to stare at him, horrified. “You are not saying what I think you’re saying.”
He smiled. It was not a nice smile.
At the gens amplexi two weeks ago, when Lily had been made officially Nokolai, she’d received a fervent welcome. So many of the clan had been eager to talk to the new Chosen. To touch her. She’d been baffled by the attention, and he hadn’t explained. He’d been pretty sure she’d be appalled.
He’d been right.
She swallowed. “You mean they thought… they think… good God.”
“They’re hoping the Lady will help us through you.”
“You told them different, didn’t you?” It was more demand than question.
“What could I tell them? I don’t know the Lady’s purpose.”
“Well, you can’t possibly think I’m some kind of mouthpiece for your goddess, some prophet or… what’s it called? Avatar.”
“The Lady doesn’t use avatars.”
He could almost hear her teeth grinding. “Pick another word for it, then. Good God. I don’t even have the language to discuss this. It’s obvious I—hey! You missed the turnoff.”
“No, I didn’t.”
For several long heartbeats she didn’t respond. When she did, her voice was tight. “I’m not going to your apartment.”
“They knew enough about you to get to you at your sister’s wedding. They for damned sure know where you live.”
“Rule—”
“For God’s sake, Lily, be reasonable! You’ve got a decent lock on your door, but that won’t stop someone from breaking that nice, big window in the living room and stepping inside. I can protect you from most things, but if that demon—”
“I haven’t asked you to protect me. If you—”
“They tried and failed to possess you. Who’s to say what they’ll try next? If the Azá‘s goddess is behind this—and we’d better assume She is—She is not one to give up on revenge. Killing you would be the easiest of their options. Benedict sent a couple of his men to my place for extra security tonight, and that’s where we’re going.”
“Fine. Great. But if you think I’m going to trail bodyguards around while conducting an investigation, you need a reality check. And I can’t stay at your place tonight. If you’d just—”
“Dammit, Lily, this is not the time to argue about where we live! Or whether we’re living together at all, or just getting together every night. Do you have any idea how strong demons are?” he demanded, swerving around a slow-moving van. “You’re protected from a magical assault, but that doesn’t help much if the demon decides to rip off your head.”
“Would you slow down? Your reflexes may be super-sized, but the drivers you’re passing have to get by with plain old human response times. You could scare one of them off the road or into another car.”
He glanced at the speedometer. His lips tightened as he forced himself to ease off on the accelerator. He’d passed a hundred without noticing.
“You also need to turn around. And listen. I’ve been trying to tell you—”
“What? What kind of lame-ass reason could you possibly have to refuse to make yourself as safe as possible?”
“Dirty Harry.”
Rule swallowed what he’d been about to say and used his breath for cursing her cat—her blasted, be-damned, antisocial, wolf-hating beast of a cat they’d left outside
• because the infernal creature had been off doing stupid cat things when they left for the wedding.
But Lily had accepted responsibility for the animal, and you didn’t abandon a dependent when there was danger. Rule understood that, however little he liked it at the moment. The neighbor Lily occasionally asked to feed her cat was out of town. No one else had a key, and it was after midnight.