Mother hadn’t even noticed that Grandmother was missing. Lily had tried to tell her, but she hadn’t listened. She never listened. So it was up to Lily to find Grandmother, wasn’t it?
She had to be here somewhere. That’s why they came to the stupid ball games—because Grandmother liked them. So she was here. Lily just had to find her and then everything would be okay.
Maybe the crowd-beast had swallowed her. Grandmother wasn’t very big. Not as little as Lily, but not big like the other grown-ups, either.
No, Lily told herself. No, that was stupid. Nothing could eat Grandmother. If the crowd-beast tried, she’d just tell it to back off. And it would. Grandmother was little, but only in her body. She was very big otherwise.
So was her secret. They weren’t supposed to talk about it, not ever, not even to each other. It wasn’t the same as Lily’s secret, except sort of, because they were both about magic. People didn’t like magic, so good girls didn’t do it. And if they couldn’t help doing it, like Lily couldn’t help knowing when she touched something that had magic on it, then they weren’t supposed to tell anyone.
Lily sniffed. Grown-ups were always making stupid rules. Especially her mother. Her mother was stuffed with rules, and most of them were dumb. Right now Lily wished she had a great big magic, one that would make everyone else go away so she could find Grandmother.
Unease stirred inside her. Something wasn’t right. This whole setup wasn’t right. Why was she thinking about adults as grown-ups? She was…
Suddenly the crowd-beast swelled up tight around her, like she was a splinter it meant to squeeze out. It was hard to breathe. Lily shoved with arms and body against all those legs and big, suffocating bodies. She managed to pop out, a tender little grape squeezed from its skin, into a small, clear space.
She stood there panting, looking for Grandmother. Or Mother. Looking for someone, anyone, who could—
“Do you need help, little girl?” The hand, coming from behind to rest on Lily’s shoulder, made her jump. The voice, for all its friendly words, terrified her. It was high and sweet and cold, so cold… “Are you lost?”
The hand tightened, hurting-hard. Lily yelped and tried to wrench away, but another hand gripped her and slowly turned her around. Lily fought it. She didn’t want to see, didn’t want—
That face—that smiling, pretty woman’s face framed by soft blond hair, and those eyes, empty like a doll’s— Lily knew that face. Those eyes. “No!” she screamed. “No, you’re dead, I know you are. I made you dead!”
“I’m going to eat you,” the smiling woman said. “Then you’ll be dead, too. We’ll be together.”
“No!”
“Together forever…” She was bending down, bending close.
“No, no, no! Be dead. I want you dead all the way— dead, dead, dead!” As the woman’s hands dug in harder and her face came closer, Lily shut her eyes, wishing for the biggest magic ever, one that would kill the smiling woman forever.
And all of a sudden she was sitting on top of the other woman, who was on her back. She wasn’t little anymore. And she was pounding the woman’s head against the cold, stony floor, pounding it and pounding it. Blood and gray stuff leaked from the shattered skull she cupped in her two hands, and glistening white bone shards penetrated the hair. And that was wrong. That hadn’t happened before. But it was happening now, and the woman wasn’t smiling anymore, and her hair—it wasn’t blond like it was supposed to be. It was… it was…
Lily stopped, horror welling up in her.
The woman’s eyes blinked once. And it was her mother looking up at her, her mother’s skull in her hands, her mother’s black hair shiny with blood and sticky with brains.
“You killed me,” she said.
Lily woke trying to scream.
“Shh… there, Lily, there, honey. It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Rule. It was Rule looking down at her, and Rule’s hand, warm and not hurting, on her right shoulder, while her bad shoulder throbbed as if Helen really had dug her fingers into it. She was an adult, not a child, and Helen was dead. Truly and forever dead.
Lily’s breath shuddered in her chest. “That was a bad one,” she whispered.
His voice was quiet, deep, the sheer masculinity of it soothing to her. “Maybe you should talk about it.”
She shook her head, unable to put words to the horror. What good would talk do? She just wanted the smothering guilt to go away. It never troubled her in the daylight hours. When she was awake, she knew she’d done what she had to do.
So why the nightmares?
Go away, she told the lingering taint from the dream. And burrowed into Rule.
“Careful—your shoulder—”
“It doesn’t matter.” And it didn’t, although it was throbbing like a bad tooth. But that meant nothing compared to the hard, physical reality of him. He closed himself around her, and his body was warm, warm enough to melt away fear and horror. She breathed in his scent and felt clean.
He was naked. She wasn’t, but her legs were bare and tangled with his. His thighs were firm, slightly rough with hair… a roughness she needed. Craved. She rubbed her thigh up along his and found that his body was responding to their closeness, too.
A delicate heat sent tendrils winding out along her veins, down her thighs to her toes, tingling, making her hum from the inside out. She went still, cherishing the sensation. Then she drew her hand along his side, cherishing him.
He didn’t ask her to put her desire into words. He didn’t ask if she was sure, or remind her of her shoulder, or say anything at all. For that she blessed the years of experience she’d earlier resented.
Instead, he cupped her face in his hands and kissed her. Slowly. With a carnality as obvious and delicate as the heat stirring in her belly.
Yes, she thought. Yes. This was what she needed… the quiet turning to the other in the middle of the night, the wordless meeting of lips, skin, breath. The trust, unfurling one pale petal at a time, that he would be there.
He rolled her onto her back and came over her, touching softly, kissing her shoulder, pushing her T-shirt aside to nibble along her ribs, tickling her belly button with his tongue. He tugged her panties down her legs and off. She ran her hands over him, marveling, trying to say with touch all that she knew of him and treasured. And all that she still wondered over.
There were no crashing cymbals this time, no rising delirium of lust. Her shoulder ached, and she was riding a wave of exhaustion as surely as she rode the swell of desire.
Yet when he slipped inside her, her breath broke. As he stroked, smooth and easy, she found a quiet joy in meeting him one slow thrust at a time. And as she surrendered to the physical tide that carried her gently through pleasure to its peak, she surrendered her compulsion to name these feelings, to tag them as lust or love or mate bond. There was only the mystery, wordless, full, breaking over her in a soundless rush.
She fell back to Earth without ever having left it and was there to hold him when his breath broke, nearly soundless, as he reached the crest of his own wave. And after, he lay on top of her still, both of them smiling into the dark. She was asleep before ever he rolled off.
RULE stood in Lily’s tub beneath the shower jets, yawning. Her apartment had its shortcomings, but did offer two boons: a windowless bedroom, easy to defend, and abundant hot water. This morning, hot water rated almost as high as defensible sleeping quarters.
After a night of sentry sleep, he’d woken early and completely. It had seemed best to leave the warmth of Lily’s bed before he gave in to his body’s urgings and woke her for another loving. She needed sleep. And she’d needed to sleep here, in her own space. He understood that. She’d had too many shocks yesterday.