“What do you mean, you couldn’t be separated?”
“If we put too much distance between us, we get dizzy. I’m told that if we get too far away we’d pass out, but we’ve never gone past the dizzy stage.”
Cynna’s lips pursed. She glanced at Cullen.
“Don’t look at me,” he said to the ceiling. “I’m an innocent bystander.”
Lily continued doggedly. “Rule says the separation thing never goes away completely, but I don’t know what our limit is now. I haven’t tested it lately, but…” She paused, tensing.
The mate bond was like background music, she thought. If the radio was always playing, she didn’t notice unless she stopped and paid attention. But let someone change the station or the volume…
“What is it?” Cynna asked.
“He’s moving again. Moving fast.”
“What do you mean, again?” Cullen asked sharply.
“He’s been moving for some time, but slowly. Now…” She tried to estimate. “He might be in a car or something, because he’s going a lot faster.”
Cynna frowned. “Can you guess at the distance? Are you likely to pass out or something?”
“I don’t know. He’s farther away now than he has been since the bond happened, and the farther away he is, the fuzzier my estimate of distance. Direction, though—I get that right every time.”
Cynna nodded. “It sounds a lot like Finding.”
“What do you mean?”
“The farther away my target is, the less I can say about the distance. There’s a limit, too. For me it’s between a hundred and a hundred fifty miles. Within that limit I get direction. Beyond it…” She shrugged.
“You don’t just Find physical objects, though. You said you turned up ghosts sometimes.”
“Yeah.” Her eyebrows twitched together. “That’s sort of what it was like when I tried Finding Rule.”
“He is not a ghost. The mate bond ties me to his body, which is very much alive.” Somewhere. “What, exactly, did you Find?”
“I went to the scene this morning after I talked to Ruben, and I did a Find. I, uh, already had Rule’s pattern, from when I used to know him. It’s better to have the current pattern, but I thought I had enough that I’d be able to tell if he was still around.”
“And?” Lily thought she might jump up and shake the woman.
“What I got was fuzzy. Real fuzzy. I didn’t think it was a ghost, but it’s hard to be sure when I had such a poor fix. But there was a direction, so I followed it. Right where my Gift told me he was, though…” She spread both hands. “A gas station. Lots of cars. No sign of Rule.”
Her heart was pounding. Cynna had gotten the same results she had—a clear fix on a specific spot, yet no sign of Rule. That proved she wasn’t crazy and that the mate bond was working right, didn’t it? “Has that ever happened before?”
Cynna shook her head but then added, “Except with ghosts.”
“Ghosts don’t move around. Where was this gas station, and what time did you do the Find?”
“The corner of Middlebrook and Hessing. I got there about nine-thirty.”
Lily leaned over and pulled her table closer, took the city map off it, and passed it to Cullen.
He raised his eyebrows as he took it.
“Check my notes,” she said tersely. “I’ve been trying to track Rule. I had to guess at the distance, but the direction is right.”
He unfolded it, studied it a moment, and then passed it to Cynna without a word.
“Where… oh, yeah, I see it.” She looked at Lily. “Maybe you’re better at guessing distance than you thought. The line connecting your estimates runs pretty close to my gas station. The times fit, too.”
“Yes.” She looked at Cullen—who was back to studying the ceiling. “Rule’s people might expect me to be weird right now. I gather that the sudden breaking of the mate bond can have repercussions. But only if you start with the assumption that he’s dead. And I can’t see why you’ve done that.”
That was one hell of a fascinating ceiling.
She kept going. “There’s no body. The staff wasn’t even touching Rule when you crisped Harlowe, so why assume he’s dead? And now Cynna has confirmed that the mate bond is working. She and I both know where he is— only he isn’t there. I only see one possibility. He’s someplace that’s tied to Earth geographically, but isn’t Earth.”
“I’ve tried,” Cullen told the ceiling. “Haven’t I tried? But she’s determined, and maybe Isen is wrong. No, strike that—Isen is definitely wrong.” Abruptly he pushed to his feet. “Being Rho isn’t like being the pope, is it? No one granted him infallibility.”
“What are you talking about?”
He began pacing. There wasn’t much room for it. “Cast your mind back. I didn’t say Rule was dead. At the time you weren’t in any shape to consider nuances of speech, but what I said was that he was gone.”
“So you don’t think he’s dead.”
“He might be.” Cullen shook his head. “I don’t know. Isen wants me to lie to you about that, and I could. I’m an excellent liar, but my heart isn’t in it. And I’m not good at blind obedience. Lost the knack, I suppose, in all those years I was clanless…” Cullen stopped, tilting his head back and closing his eyes. “God, I’m tired.”
“Tough. Keep talking.”
He sighed. “You’re right. Right about all of it, I’m afraid.”
She closed her eyes. Breathe, she reminded herself. She did, and her muscles turned slippery, loosening up so suddenly it was a good thing she was propped up.
“So why would this Isen dude want you to lie about it?” Cynna demanded.
Cullen glanced at her. “Isen Turner. He’s Rule’s father and the Rho, the head of Nokolai… my clan. He wants to protect Lily.”
“To protect me?” That sent a charge through her that brought her upright again, all but vibrating with anger. “By trying to convince me Rule’s dead?”
“Think about it.” Cullen’s face could never be other than beautiful. Even when it had been butchered, the eyes gauged out, it had possessed a certain ravaged glory. But she’d never seen it look so naked—naked like an old, twisty tree. All bones, no softness.
He almost looked his age. “I spent a long time working out the possibilities last night. I’ll give them to you the way I gave them to the Rho. One, Rule is dead. Wait.” He held up his hand. “Hear me out.”
He resumed his pacing, a two-legged panther caged in a modern hospital room. “Mage fire burns in places—call them dimensions—you can’t see, and it burns very, very hot there. When my mage fire hit the staff, the hole in space that was its underlying reality imploded. It could have sucked Rule along somehow.”
“Sucked him… where?”
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” He reached the wall and turned. “Two. The staff was Hers. If She called it to Her the second the mage fire hit, she might have been able to recover part of it. I don’t know why Rule would have been dragged with the staff. As you said, it was touching you, not him, so I didn’t give this a very high probability. But it was just possible that the effect traveled along you without, ah, grabbing hold, because of your Gift. And Rule got taken instead.”
To Her. The Old One or goddess or whatever. Lily’s mouth was dry. “One problem with that. My Gift is gone.”
He nodded without pausing in his restless motion. “Exactly. So I thought Rule probably was dead, only you were so damned sure he wasn’t. I couldn’t overlook the chance that you were right. I tried scrying for him.”