Yes, it was. Lily’s throat tightened. She nodded, concentrating on not letting her eyes fill. “Here’s my car,” she said unnecessarily, clicking her remote.
“You’ve got it, too.”
“Me?” She shook her head. “The boss bitch part, maybe. But I don’t have the clan-first instinct. Half the time I forget I am clan.”
“That’s not what I mean. If you’re in charge, you’ll think of the group after we cross, not just what you want or need. You won’t be able to stop yourself. Just like right now,” he said, opening the door and tossing in his bag. “You’re wanting to confess. You’re afraid you might be willing to spend me to save Rule.”
She stared. “And you think that qualifies me to lead?”
He smiled and patted her cheek. “You’re proving my point, luv.” He climbed in and shut the door.
Baffled, she shook her head went around to her side.
They were in the midst of heavy traffic on 1-5 before he spoke again. “I didn’t tell you what I went to New Orleans for.”
“I noticed,” she said dryly.
“I needed to confirm something about Dis I’d read in several references. Not good references, mind you. The only grimoires they didn’t burn during the Purge were all but worthless—fiction mixed with fantasy and peppered with a few stray facts, probably by accident. I can’t tell you how much nonsense got passed on from one medieval dabbler to another. One asshole would make up something to sound important, and half a dozen others dutifully recorded it.”
“Actually, you have told me.” Many times.
“Have I?” He glanced at her and then ahead. “That’s why I needed to double-check this. The text I wanted is far more reliable than most. It, ah, wasn’t available. But I was able to buy a photocopy of the pertinent pages. Cost a pretty penny just for that,” he added. “Isen covered it, though.”
“I take it this—” Her cell phone rang. “Pass me my phone, would you?”
He dug it out of her purse and handed it to her.
“Yes?” As she listened, her heart began to pound. “Yes. All right. Tell Cynna—no, I’ll call her myself. Do you know when they… wait, let me get a pen.”
But Cullen beat her to it. She repeated the information aloud, and he jotted down the flight numbers.
“Got it,” she said. “We’ll pick up the one from Canada. As Isen to send someone for the other one, so we can… Right. Later.”
She disconnected and gave Cullen a tight grin. “You heard?”
His eyes sparked with the same excitement she felt. “The scary old bats are coming.”
“Two of them are. Hannah says these are the two who matter. They’ve got the other pieces of the ritual. They’ve agreed to share those memories after they arrive, but they have to be present for the ritual.”
It was going to happen. They were going to make it happen. “I’m heading for Club Hell. The first one will arrive in three hours. We can talk to Max and then come back to the airport for her.”
“He’s not going to agree.”
“We have to try. Here.” She handed him her phone. “See if you can reach Cynna. We need to know when she can return.”
A few minutes later she breathed a sigh of relief when Cullen reported his brief conversation with Cynna. She Found the boy—still alive, thank God—and was at the Sacramento airport now, on standby for a flight back.
Her insides humming, Lily started going over her mental lists. What hadn’t she done? What hadn’t she thought of?
“Lily.”
“Hmm?”
“I didn’t finish telling you what I learned in New Orleans.”
“Oh. Right.” It must be important. “What was it, then?”
“There’s no moon in Dis.”
She waited a beat. When he didn’t explain, she said, “And that means—?”
“Rule went there as a wolf. He won’t have been able to Change.”
She nodded, frowning, still not understanding why he was grave.
“Don’t you know anything about us yet? By now he may not be thinking as a man, but as a wolf. He’ll still know us, but he might not understand what we tell him.” His breath gusted out. “He’ll follow you, though. You’re his mate, so he’ll go through the gate with you.”
That wasn’t great, but still didn’t seem enough to make the bones stand out so sharply in Cullen’s too-beautiful face. “What’s the rest of it?”
“If he’s been in wolf-form too long, he’ll have lost the man altogether. He won’t be able to Change back.”
Her mouth went dry. “It’s only been a week. A week and part of a day.”
“Here, yes. I’ve told you that time doesn’t pass in other realms at the same rate as it does here. In Dis it’s erratic. For Rule, a day may have passed. Or a week… or a month. A month,” he said gently, “would be too long.”
She opened her mouth to argue. She needed to argue. What he said was just stupid. Time didn’t behave that way, jumping around all over the place. But when she looked at his grim expression, doubt hit, stealing her certainty and too much of her hope.
So she looked straight ahead. After a moment she repeated her mantra. “He’s alive, though. Rule is still alive.” This time she could add to it: “And we’re going after him.”
THIRTY-ONE
AFTER her first sleep in hell, Lily had woken up hungry. Very hungry.
Gan had woken up female.
The demon was less upset at having exchanged one set of genitals for another than at the prospect of suffering periodic bouts of unconsciousness. It—she—had shrugged and said fucking was fucking, and while cocks were great, didn’t human females have multiple orgasms? And could Lily tell her how that worked?
Lily had slept twice more since then, each time waking with a terrible craving for ymu. Each time, Gan slept when she did and woke complaining. For each of her sleeps, Rule had slept four or five times. How many days did that make? She didn’t know; she’d stopped thinking in those terms. But the light had faded three times now, dissolving slowly into darkness as if someone had the sky on a dimmer switch.
When it did, the dragons sang. And she and Rule sat together and listened. Those were the best times she’d known, when it was just her, Rule, the gathering darkness, and the unearthly beauty of dragonsong.
The light was beginning to fade again, and she was watching from her favorite spot, a flat rock that stuck out over the water. From here she had a view of the open ocean outside their inlet. An illusory freedom, maybe. But it soothed her.
Gan was with her, digging idly in the sand next to the rock. Rule wasn’t.
She glanced overhead. It wouldn’t be dark for some time. The dimming took a while. But she was worried. “The dragons haven’t assembled yet for their song.”
“Bunch of noise,” Gan muttered.
The demon seemed to have no sense of what music was, much less any appreciation for it. It… she… had casually mentioned after the last dragonsong that the dragons put a lot of stock in their noisemaking. They called their leaders the Singers.
It was the first Lily had heard that the dragons had leaders. They didn’t have anything as formal as a government, a king, or a council, but apparently these Singers had enough authority to negotiate pacts with their demonic neighbors. Gan hadn’t known much more than that, though.
She looked at the other end of beach, at the grasses that marked the entrance to their cave. Worry put a pleat in her brow. Rule was in the tunnels again. He hated them. She’d seen him emerge shaking, but he kept going back.