He’d nearly told her not to come.
The wolf snorted, disgusted. If his motives had been clear, he’d have nothing to condemn himself for. Lily was tired, too, her human system probably as wrung out as his by a day that had started at four a.m. and just kept going, a day spent wading through violence and bureaucracy. But his motives were murky as hell.
Well, to the man they had been. Considered from the vantage of a wolf’s brain, his motives were as obvious as they were foolish. Rule found the next spot Toby had marked, glanced at Lily and nodded to let her know they were on Toby’s trail, and trotted on down the alley.
When Lily said she was coming, Rule had noticed the dirty wash of resentment in time to stifle it. He’d nodded, accepting that of course Lily would go with him. It was practical, of course—there were many places a wolf couldn’t go, and a naked man sometimes alarmed people more than a wolf, which they might take for a large dog. It was also typical of Lily. She’d already made room for Toby in her heart and was busily making room for him in her life.
All of which was what he’d wanted . . . and part of him resented her. Part of him—a thoroughly human part he’d tried to ignore into nonexistence—didn’t want her intruding on his relationship with Toby.
The wolf thought this was very silly. But he supposed it wouldn’t go away just because he had better sense in this form than in the other.
They reached a street empty of traffic and crossed quickly. A quick check confirmed Rule’s first guess—Toby had proceeded down the alley. They did, too.
Rule knew where the resentment came from. Now that he’d recognized it, that was obvious. He’d been raised without a mother, hadn’t he? Technically, at least. In practice he’d been mothered by virtually every woman living at Clanhome, dispersing the feminine ideal through a dozen loving lenses, leaving him with an idealized version of motherhood . . . soft-focus, unreal . . . too unreal, he saw now, to have come between him and his father. Or between him and his son.
Lily was extremely real. He stopped beside another gate and sighed. She would expect him to talk about this, and man and wolf both disliked that notion.
“Something wrong?” Lily whispered.
Nothing they could deal with now. He shook his head . . . and prepared to Change yet again.
NINETEEN
SOMETHING crawled across Toby’s ankle—he noticed because he hadn’t bothered with socks. He flicked it off with his finger. “I can’t just stay here.”
“I know, but . . . a little longer.” Talia huddled her long, skinny arms closer around her knees. Talia was two years older than him and Justin, and four inches taller. Toby liked her pretty well, even if she had started painting her fingernails lately and worrying about her hair.
There was just enough breeze to keep the leaves whispering tree secrets to each other. That was good. Toby didn’t like it when the tree house—which was just a platform, really, without any sides, but they all called it the tree house—got to swaying because the branches started moving.
Funny how steady trees looked from the ground, he thought. Get up in one and it was never entirely still.
“We’ve got to come up with a plan,” Justin said firmly.
“Come up with a plan,” Toby muttered. “Sure. You go first, since you don’t like my ideas.”
“We can’t tell them!” Justin forgot and let his voice get a little loud, and Talia shushed him, looking back at the house. “Toby, you know what my folks are like.”
“Yeah. They’re nice. I like them.”
“Well, duh! But they’re just stupid about this sort of thing.” Justin waved a hand in the general direction of his sister. “You know that. They’re all creeped out about you now, too, since you’ve been on the news and all, and that makes it worse.”
Shit. Toby tested the word in his mind, found he liked the weight of it, and tried it aloud. “Shit. They saw that stupid news deal about the custody hearing, huh?”
“Toby.” Talia could put more frown into a whisper than anyone else Toby knew. “Don’t you be cursing.”
Justin broke off a little twig growing out from the trunk. “Everybody’s seen it. Everybody in the whole country, I bet.”
“You’d think they’d be paying attention to people getting shot, not to the stuff about me.” Toby hadn’t seen much when it happened because of the way his dad had pushed him down. He’d glimpsed Dad Changing in midair, heard the scary-big blast of the gun. The people screaming. Lily’s voice all crisp and fierce telling him and Grammy to stay down, don’t move.
He hadn’t really seen much at all. So why did it stick with him so hard? Toby’s stomach felt tight and unhappy. He swallowed.
Justin and Talia looked at each other.
“What?” Toby scowled when they didn’t answer. “You’d better tell me.”
“Nothin’.” Justin gave all his attention to stripping the leaves off his twig.
“He might as well know.” Talia eased her hunch. “Daddy thinks the shooting was about you. He says Mr. Hodge went crazy because he found out what you are and was trying to shoot you, or maybe your dad and you both, only he’s a real bad shot.”
Toby sat up straight. “That’s not right. That’s not right at all. Talia, you know better. You have to tell—”
“I can’t! If they find out—”
“I’m afraid,” said a deep, sympathetic voice from the ground below them, “you are going to have to tell.”
Talia yipped as if she were the lupus. Justin shot to his feet so fast he hit his head on the branch over him. Toby turned and peered over the edge of the platform, feeling about a hundred pounds lighter. “Hi, Dad. That’s my dad,” he added to his friends. “I guess I’m in trouble?”
“Some,” Dad said, keeping his voice low. “I think you should all climb down now. I could come up there, but I’m tired. And I don’t think Lily is in the mood for tree-climbing.”
Lily? He’d brought her along? Toby frowned, trying to see past all the leaves, not sure how he felt about Lily being here. Probably just as well, he decided. Lily was who Talia needed to talk to, anyway. “Okay.”
Justin grabbed his arm. “No.”
“What’s the matter? You scared to go down there with the big, bad werewolf?”
Justin shook his head hard but said nothing. It was Talia who answered. “Well, I’m going down. I bet none of them will come around Toby’s dad.”
“Come on,” Toby said to his best friend. “If we don’t go down, he might think he has to tell your folks.”
That persuaded Justin. A few moments later, Toby stood with Talia on one side, Justin on the other, facing his father and Lily. They did not look happy with him.
“I assume your friends asked you to give your word not to tell,” Dad said in that quiet voice that might make some people think he wasn’t mad, but Toby knew better.
“Yes, sir. Well, I gave my word about Talia’s secret a long time—” Justin poked his side. Toby gave him an exasperated look. “He heard us talking. He knows there’s something we aren’t telling, so he knows there’s a secret.” He looked back at his dad. “But even though they don’t have to keep my secret anymore, I still have to keep theirs. Because I promised.”
Dad nodded, agreeing. Toby had known he would, about that part of it. “Yet that doesn’t explain why you sneaked out of the house.”
“That,” Toby said, “was a judgment call.”