LILY’S heartbeat jumped when she saw Rule tense. She rushed up the last few stairs, weapon ready. Then he relaxed and asked someone what they were doing here.
“Good question,” she said, slowing to a walk. Dammit, she was too tired for yet another adrenaline cocktail. Her heart was still pounding, but she’d hit shaky soon enough. She just hoped she didn’t fall flat on her face. “There’s also who, how, and why, but I’m tempted to skip them in favor of ‘good night.’”
“I’ll do my best to get to ‘good night’ quickly.” Rule stepped inside, and Lily had one of her questions answered.
There was only one chair in her small, spare living room. Her unexpected visitor wasn’t using it. Instead, he sat on the floor pillow by the coffee table, playing with the air between his fingers. He wore a dark blue shirt, collarless and only half buttoned. His feet were bare, and his cinnamon-colored hair had gone too long without a trim. With his head bent, it concealed a face she knew to be heartbreakingly gorgeous.
Cullen looked up. “Hello, luv. That is one ugly dress. The blood yours?”
Lily sighed. “I know I locked the door, yet here you are. In my living room. Uninvited.”
“Ah, well, I thought you wouldn’t want me to wait out on the cold concrete, and I was sure I didn’t want me to. I’ve been here for…” His fingers paused. “Good Lord, it must be after midnight.” He looked her up and down with brilliant blue eyes she wasn’t entirely used to. Three weeks ago, his eye sockets had been scabbed-over hollows. “Looks like you’ve had quite an evening. Rough sex?”
She growled low in her throat and started for the kitchen. “Come on, Harry.” And almost humiliated herself when Rule scooped her up in his arms, swallowing a startled shriek at the last second. “Don’t do that when I’m armed.”
“She’s got a point,” Cullen said.
Rule deposited her in the oversize armchair. “You can disarm now. I’ll take care of Harry and then get rid of Cullen. And before you blow up at me,” he added, dropping to crouch in front of her, “remember that I’m used to being yelled at for my high-handed behavior.”
Cullen chuckled. “He means the Rho. The old man’s healing, but it takes longer at his age. Makes him great fun to be around. He ripped Rule a new one last week for following Nettie’s instructions about the Council meeting.”
Rule had told her he had clan business to attend to last Thursday. He hadn’t said it was a Council meeting. He didn’t have to tell her everything, but she was clan now, wasn’t she? Shouldn’t he have told her?
She looked at the eyes holding steady on her own— dark eyes, not bright blue like his friend’s, set in a face that was striking but imperfect. The nose was too narrow, a little too long. The lips were too thin, and the ears… Rule’s left ear was set higher than his right.
Funny. She hadn’t noticed that before.
She leaned over to place her weapon carefully on the floor beside the chair, then straightened so she could trace one imperfectly placed ear. Feelings tumbled through her like an acrobatic troupe—bouncing, rolling, piling up on top of each other in precarious balance. And she realized she was smiling. “I’d have to come up with something pretty impressive to compete with one of your father’s rants. I don’t think I’m up to it.”
“You’re impressive.” He leaned in to give her a light kiss. “At all times.”
“Very sweet,” Cullen said. “And generally I’d enjoy watching your foreplay, but I did come here for a reason. I’d appreciate it if you could leave off the billing and cooing for a bit.”
“I’m too tired to kill him,” Lily said. “You do it.”
“After I feed Harry,” Rule said, straightening. “Who isn’t much of a watch cat, apparently.”
Cullen shook his head without looking up from the empty space between his hands. “Don’t worry about Harry. I already fed him.”
Sure enough, instead of glaring at them from the kitchen doorway, Harry sat by the coffee table, staring at Cullen.
“What did you feed him?” Lily asked. Harry was supposed to be on a diet, though the cat disagreed with his vet about the necessity.
“Ham. You had some in the fridge that he seemed to like. He ate enough of it, anyway, before going back out. I had a sandwich, too.” He paused to frown at the cat. “Stop that.”
Rule shook his head, bent, and scooped Lily up again so he could settle in the chair with her. It was a chair and a half, so there was room for both of them… as long as she sat with her legs draped across his lap.
That was the way he arranged her, at least. “We need to have a talk about this new habit you’ve acquired of moving me around to suit yourself.”
“I promise to let you move me around later.”
Her mind immediately offered an image of one possible arrangement of Rule’s long, beautiful body, and suddenly her body was a welcome place to be in spite of its aches.
He knew, of course. If nothing else, her scent would tell him. His lips turned up, but his eyes remained dark and serious as he tucked her hair behind her ear. “When you’ve rested, nadia,” he said softly.
She lifted her eyebrows. “We’ll see.” Then she looked at Cullen and sighed. “Get to the point. You claimed you had one.”
“Half a moment. Bloody interfering beast,” Cullen muttered, wiggling his little ringer as if he was tugging on something. “I used to have a cat as a familiar,” he added, as if that explained things. “They can’t resist putting in their two cents… there.”
“Cullen,” she said, exasperated, “what are you doing?”
He looked up. His quick grin took him from annoying nutcase to heartthrob. “I’ve been messing with some loose sorcéri while I waited for you. You’ve rather a lot drifting around, you know, considering there’s no node nearby. Perhaps the ocean… but you don’t want a theoretical discussion right now. Want to see?”
Without waiting for an answer, he tilted his hands outward, muttered something—and he was holding what looked for all the world like a tennis ball made of wiggly, glowing worms.
A second later it flickered and passed back to invisibility. Lily was impressed in spite of herself. “Those are sorcéri? I didn’t know you could make that stuff show up for us nonsorcerous types.”
“New trick.” He looked pleased with himself. “I haven’t figured out how to make it stable, so the usefulness is limited. Makes a pretty show, though, doesn’t it?”
Rule didn’t sound nearly as pleased. “I thought it was dangerous to deal with them directly instead of through a spell.”
“These are pretty weak. And I am pretty good. Ciao,” he said, and clapped his hands, apparently doing away with the energies he’d gathered. The cat turned his head as if watching something invisible drift into the corner by the coat closet.
“Cats see them, too?” Lily asked.
Cullen shrugged. “Some do. That’s why so many witches take cats for familiars.”
She chewed on that a moment. “And what you did just now—you changed something about the sorcéri, right? You did it to them, not to us.”
Cullen’s eyebrows went up. “You don’t usually ask stupid questions. Aside from how annoyed Rule would be with me if I did something to him magically without his consent, directly changing people is damned tricky. I confess I’m not up to it. Neither is anyone else in this realm, of course, unless we’re entertaining a faerie lord unaware. And you’re immune anyway, which brings us back to the stupid question part. What’s going on?”
“Lily was attacked by a demon,” Rule said flatly. “It may have left some sort of residue behind.”
Cullen went very still. Only his eyes moved, cutting to her.
“I’m not possessed,” she said, irritated. “Nettie checked me out. But it left something on me. It shouldn’t have been able to, but it did.”