“You show up at her lair. She said she wants to talk to you, so she’ll probably be there.”
He was looking out the window, so she couldn’t see his expression. And his voice sounded normal—lightly mocking, though it wasn’t obvious whether the mockery was directed out or toward himself. Yet still she had the sense that he was… not sad, exactly. Lost.
Rule had been his friend, perhaps his only real friend, for many years. Years when he’d been clanless, leaving him alone in a way no human could fully grasp.
Had he thought having sex with her would make him feel closer to Rule?
Yech, she thought and tried to push the idea away. But it clung the way a good hunch will, and gradually the disgust melted, leaving her a little disoriented. And hurting for him. “Cynna might not mind the idea of comfort sex.”
He smiled at her over his shoulder, his eyes blue and sharp and somehow knowing. As if he’d guessed everything she’d been thinking… and maybe a few things she hadn’t quite wrapped her mind around yet. “There’s a notion. She’s annoying, but she smells good.”
Lily blinked. At times she almost forgot Cullen was lupus. He was odd in so many ways that had little to do with his wolfish part. “I hope you won’t put it to her quite that way.”
“I speak fairly good western human when I have to, but I don’t think Cynna would require that.”
“In other words, you’ll say what women expect, but you won’t mean it.”
He was amused. “I think of it as an imprecise translation. I don’t lie. I don’t have to.”
No, he probably had more women making him offers than he could properly attend to. “That,” she said after a moment, “is deeply annoying.”
“It’s all in your point of view. I find it convenient.” His head turned. “Lunch is heading up the stairs.”
“Already?” Funny. A few minutes ago she’d had no interest in food. She’d have eaten, just as she’d take care of her burn, because it was necessary. Now… it was weird, but she was hungry. Actually hungry. “I’ll get the pickles. No one ever puts on enough pickles.”
She had a next step again. And if the Rhej couldn’t help, she’d think of something else. Lily headed for the kitchen, thinking about steps and friendship and what kind of ammo would be most likely to stop a demon.
CLAN HOME. It rested in the mountains outside the city, sprawling over nearly two thousand acres. They weren’t regal, these mountains, like their grander cousins to the north, nor garbed in towering pines. The slopes were steep but not terribly high; valleys were mostly narrow, cut by small, seasonal streams. This was chaparral country, with scrub oak, juniper, sage, and here and there the tough, ugly mountain mahogany tangled together on the rocky slopes.
It was cooler up here, downright nippy compared to sea level. The air smelled of dust and sage. At least that’s what Lily smelled. She didn’t know how much more the werewolf in front of her was smelling.
“So,” Cynna said, “is this Rhej person a bit of a loner? She lives up here away from everyone else.”
They were following a narrow path up one of those scrub-covered slopes. Cullen led; Cynna brought up the rear.
“Lots of people prefer to live slightly apart,” he said. “They enjoy the contact with the wild. It doesn’t make them loners.”
Apart in this case meant away from the commons—a loose cluster of homes and small businesses along the only real road in Clanhome. The Rhej’s home was less distant than some, being only a couple of miles away from the end of the gravel road.
But there was a great deal she didn’t know about Nokolai and Clanhome. She’d only been here three times. Once when she was investigating a murder—the investigation that brought her and Rule together. The second time she’d come to take part in her gens amplexi, the ceremony when she was formally adopted into Nokolai. On her third trip here a little over a week ago, she’d just visited, trying to get to know some of the people she was now bound to.
“You holding up okay?” Cullen asked as they straggled up the last, steepest part of the path. ‘
“I’m fine.‘” Utterly spent, actually, which was mortifying but not unexpected. A wounded body turned tyrant, insisting on channeling everything into healing. But her burn wasn’t hurting too badly. Looser clothing helped. “Why didn’t I meet the Rhej at the gens amplexi?”
Cullen stopped, though they weren’t at the top of the mountain. Maybe they didn’t have to go all the way up. He glanced over his shoulder at her, a small smile on his mouth. “You did. You just didn’t know it.”
“More secrets,” she muttered. “Your bunch is too damned fond of secrets.” She was breathing hard as she came up beside him.
The ground leveled out here, forming a small clearing. Not a natural clearing, though everything Lily saw was native and looked like it had just happened to sprout where it was. Bracken fern and spleenwort snuggled up beneath a small pinyon pine. Mock parsley and wild celery grew in a tangle with yarrow and some species of aster that still clung to a few small, bright blue blooms. But many of the plants she saw wouldn’t have grown on this west-facing slope naturally. Someone had planted them—after digging out the oak and juniper.
A huge job, that, without earth-moving equipment. Maybe she’d had lupus muscles to help.
The house was set smack up against the mountain, a tiny adobe building almost the color of the dirt behind it, but with a shiny metal roof. As Lily’s attention left the plants for the house, the front door opened. An old woman swept out a scatter of dust.
Lily stared. She recognized her, all right, though they hadn’t spoken at the ceremony or the celebration that had followed. The woman stood maybe five feet high, which was enough to make her stick in Lily’s memory. She was Anglo, over sixty, and fat—the roly-poly, happy-grandmother kind of fat. Her hair was white and straight and short. It looked like she cut it herself, maybe with hedge trimmers. Her eyes had once been blue.
Now they were milky. She was blind.
Those sightless eyes aimed right at them. “Well, come in,” she said. “You didn’t hike up here to watch me sweep my floor.” And she turned around and went back inside.
Lily gave Cullen a hard look. “Secrets,” she muttered, and headed for the little house.
Inside it was a single square room, its symmetry disturbed only by two bumped-out sections with doors that she guessed were the bathroom and a large closet. To her left was the kitchen area—open shelving above the single wooden counter with a tiny electric stove and a refrigerator straight out of the fifties. To her right was a round table and four wooden chairs. The bed, a double, was at the back, between the bumped-out portions. Two battered trunks lined up along one wall. Along the opposite wall was a cushy green recliner, a top-of-the-line stereo, and three large baskets. A gray tabby slept in the recliner.
No rugs. White plastered walls, dark wood floor… and an altar. Set smack in the center of the room, the rough-hewn stone held three white candle stubs, a scattering of sage, and a small silver saucer. Chiseled into the front of it was a symbol much like Lily’s missing toltoi.
The Rhej stood at her stove with her back to the door. She wore jeans, an old flannel shirt, white socks, and no shoes. “You’ll have tea,” she informed them. “I made cookies, too. They’re on the table.”
“We didn’t come here for cookies,” Cullen said.
The old woman clucked her tongue. “Still angry, eh? It wasn’t me said you were no Etorri all those years ago. Though as it turned out the Etorri Rhej was right, wasn’t she? It just took Nokolai a while to realize you were ours.”