“She came down here after we arrived. Someone let her know we were here. She says Alicia has a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade. They think she’ll be okay, though they’re keeping her overnight for observation. But she’s woken, too. She was . . . When she first woke, she was frantic about Toby.”
He stopped, remembering how sure he’d been that Alicia didn’t really care about her son. Yet she’d fought for him.
“Does she remember the attack?” Lily asked.
“Most of it. She’d stopped for gas. It was one of those automated places, with no attendants. A friendly woman dressed like an aging hippie was the only other customer. She asked Alicia for help. She was having car trouble. She thought it was the battery.”
“Mandy Ann.”
“Yes. Alicia remembers peering into the rear-mounted engine of the woman’s old VW bug when something struck her hard on her shoulders. She fell to the pavement—her shoulder blade was broken by the blow, though she didn’t know it—and saw that harmless old hippie woman with a baseball bat in her hands. The woman grabbed Toby’s arm and yanked him toward her car, and Alicia got up and fought for her son.”
Rule swallowed. He’d seen the scratches on Mandy Ann’s face, hadn’t he? “She doesn’t remember being hit a second time, but Mandy Ann must have swung that bat again, this time giving her a concussion.”
Lily put her arm around Rule and leaned into him. His arm naturally circled her. “Weird, isn’t it?” she said. “I guess people love the way that they love. It isn’t always the best way, or the way we want them to, but love happens.”
Love happens. He smiled. “It does.” They stood for a moment in silence. This is still comfort, he thought. Still necessary, even without the mate bond.
Cullen sighed. “The good news isn’t universal. We still have a wraith to deal with, you know. Can we talk about it outside?”
Rule shook his head. “I don’t want to leave Toby. He could wake again at any time and be confused.”
“All right, then. First, you need to know what she did to Charley, in the name of love. She took the still-living blood from his body before he’d finished cooling. She’d been experimenting with blood magic for some time.”
“Blood magic isn’t always necessarily evil,” Rule said. “You told me that yourself.”
“Some of it’s neutral, some’s gray, and some . . .” Cullen’s mouth twisted. “I saw what she’d been dabbling in, and she’d left gray behind.”
Lily cocked an eyebrow. “You’re saying she’d already gone over to the Dark Side when her son died?”
“Put it how you like—her mind had been twisted by what she’d been practicing.”
“Charley died suddenly,” Rule said. “There was a ghost?”
“Good guess. Yes, he’d been on his way to see her, but only his ghost arrived. Came as quite a shock.” Cullen shifted as if wanting to pace, but there was no room for it in the tiny room where Rule’s son slept. “She was brilliant, really. She had an old runic spell, very old, that she’d been studying. She’d worked out some possible variations already. The amount of improvisation she did on the spot . . . brilliant. Pity she was batty.”
“Yes,” Rule said dryly, “I think her son and daughter would agree.”
“So she saw Charley’s ghost,” Lily prompted, “and went out and did her spell?”
Cullen nodded. “She raced to the crash site and collected his blood, then used it to write the runes. The power wind was still blowing—you remember how long that final wind lasted. She used it, too. She ripped his spirit apart. He lost his name, his past, the memory of having been lupus, even his memory of her. She sank the memories into his blood, which she enspelled against decay. Ever since, she’s used that blood to call him back to her, over and over, and feed what’s left of him on death.”
“Sweet Lady.” Rule shook his head, shaken. “Did she understand what she did to him? How could she do that to her son?”
“She convinced herself she was saving him,” Lily said quietly.
He looked at her, and thought of Alicia and of what Mandy Ann had planned for Toby. And shuddered.
Lily’s arm tightened around him. “She thought she could get him a new body, didn’t she?”
“At first she expected him to take care of that himself. When he didn’t, she decided to help him out by making his sister, ah, susceptible to his possession.”
Rule felt sick. Sick and unbearably sad. “Crystal didn’t know what her mother had done, did she?”
“No. We have to stop the wraith, Rule.”
“You don’t usually bother to point out the obvious.”
Then Cullen told him what they had to do to stop the wraith.
Rule heard him out, fury gathering in his belly. When he finished, Rule had two words for the idea. “Absolutely not.”
“Rule.” Lily looked sad—and, damn her, determined. If he hadn’t known for a fact there was no blood bond between her and Toby, he’d have sworn he recognized the tilt to her chin. “Only part of it is up to you. The part that’s mine, I’ll do. Whether you agree or not.”
“I’ll stop you.” He said that as certainly as if it were possible.
“How?” She held his gaze steadily. “If it’s the only way to keep the wraith from killing again and again, then it has to be done. And if it’s the only way to . . . to free Charley, then that needs doing, too.”
He couldn’t stop her. He knew that, in spite of his foolish words. All he could do was fall in with his friend’s damnable plan—and make it work. He looked at Cullen, the mantles stirring uneasily in his gut. “The wraith must be compelled, you said.”
“You’ve got the mantles. That’s compulsion—or will be, after you do the first part.”
“I have the heirs’ portions. This will require a Rho’s authority.”
Cullen caught on quickly. “Shit. Oh, shit.”
Rule smiled coldly. “You advised me to become Leidolf Rho, didn’t you? It seems I’ll be assuming the position ahead of schedule.”
“What do you mean?” Lily asked. “If you plan to go to Leidolf Clanhome and kill Victor—”
“I don’t have to go there to do it.” Cullen knew. He’d carried a bit of mantle. He knew what the answer was.
Cullen sighed and looked at Lily. “He’s going to take the mantle from Victor. He’s got a larger than usual heir’s portion already, and a mantle . . . uh, usually it wants to be with the strongest, most capable leader. Victor’s in a coma. Rule’s betting the mantle won’t resist much. If Rule pulls it away from Victor, Victor dies.”
“No,” she said. “No, Rule. It isn’t necessary. Leidolf will never forgive you, and the other clans . . . God, it might technically be murder. No.”
“Are you going to arrest me?” His lips still curved up, but he wasn’t smiling. “Only part of this is up to you. The part that’s mine,” he said, giving her back her own words, “I’ll do.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
THEY took Toby home late in the afternoon. He was still very sleepy and didn’t object to going up to bed—though he did get the ban on television in the bedroom lifted temporarily. Grammy brought in what she called the “sick set,” an old TV that she hooked up when Toby was ill.
Alicia had continued to improve, and her husband was with her. Louise planned to go back to the hospital tomorrow, but she, too, needed a rest. When Toby fell asleep watching cartoons, she decided to lie down and “rest my eyes a minute.”
She dozed off almost as fast as her grandson.
It was twilight when Rule, Lily, and Cullen went into the backyard with the jar of blood. Twilight, the between time, with dusky air flooding the senses with honeysuckle and fresh-cut grass, with hints and possibilities.