Yet here she was. She wasn’t sure why. In some murky, underneath way it was connected to what she’d done yesterday, when she and Rule had stood in line for a ridiculous amount of time at the County Clerk’s office. They’d left with a marriage license good for the next ninety days.
The wedding was in March—two months, one week, and two days away.
Yesterday had been the immediate catalyst for this visit, but the decision to come here had grown up organically in Lily’s mind over the last several months. She’d found out where Helen was back in June, but hadn’t come. Last month she’d swung by Mount Hope’s office and gotten directions and the map, but hadn’t gone to Helen’s grave. She hadn’t been ready.
Ready for what? She wasn’t sure. She was here, and she still wasn’t sure why.
Mount Hope had been San Diego’s municipal cemetery for about a hundred and fifty years. Raymond Chandler was buried here. So was Alta Hulett, America’s first female attorney, and the guy who established Balboa Park, and a lot of veterans. So was Ah Quin, who was remembered as one the city’s founding fathers…at least by its Chinese residents. And so were those who’d been buried at the county’s expense, though budget cuts meant the county was likely to cremate, not plant, these days.
Helen had died a virgin, a killer, and intestate, but taxpayers hadn’t had to pick up the tab for disposing of her mortal remains. The trustee appointed by a judge had seen to that, paying for it out of her estate.
Turned out Helen had socked away well over a quarter million. Telepaths had an inside track on conning people, didn’t they? If they could shut out the voices in their heads enough to function, that is—which Helen had been able to do, thanks to the Old One she served. That’s how she’d met her protégé, Patrick Harlowe…who’d also died badly, but not at Lily’s hands. Cullen Seabourne had done the honors there.
But Lily had killed again since then. Helen was her first, but killing and war went together, didn’t they? Even if most of the country didn’t know they were at war, the lupi did. Lily did. And so did her boss, head of the FBI’s Unit Twelve…head, too, of the far less official Shadow Unit.
In the run-up to the war, Lily had killed demons, helped a wraith reach true death, and ushered a supposed immortal through that small, dark door. This last September she’d tried and failed to kill a sidhe lord. And in October, just before the first open battle of the war, she’d shot a man. Double-tapped him.
That man had just shot a fellow FBI agent—a lying, treacherous bastard of an agent, but at that point he’d been on Lily’s side. There had been other lives on the line: four lupi, another FBI agent, and the twenty-two people the bad guys intended to slaughter. Lily had sited on the shooter’s head—his body had been blocked by the van he’d driven—and squeezed off two quick shots. She’d killed him cold, not hot, killed him to stop him from killing others.
That was training. Most cops never had to use their weapons, but when you took up the badge you knew you might be called on to take a life. Lily had never doubted she could. Not since she was nine, anyway. The man who’d raped and killed her friend while she watched, tied up and waiting for him to do the same to her, had been arrested and tried and convicted. He’d gone to prison for life, which was all the vengeance she was supposed to want.
But for months afterward, she’d dreamed of murder.
Lily had always known she entered the police force to stop the monsters. She was beginning to understand the other reason she’d needed that bureaucratic harness.
“Goddamn morbid sort of thing to do, isn’t it?” said a gravelly voice. “Hanging out at the grave of someone you killed.”
Lily jolted, then twisted to scowl at the intruder. “Oh, hell. I thought you were gone.”
“Guess you were wrong.” The man standing disrespectfully atop a nearby grave wore a dark suit with a wrinkled white shirt and a plain tie. He was on the skinny side of lean, with his dark, thinning hair combed straight back from a broad forehead, and he was pale. Pale as in white. Also slightly see-through.
Al Drummond. Her very own personal haunt.
TWO
WHAT had she ever done to deserve this? Lily ran both hands through her hair. “Go away.”
“Ah…Lily?” Scott said.
Scott, of course, hadn’t seen or heard anything, except for her talking to empty air. “It’s Drummond, dropping in again for a visit.” Al Drummond, former FBI Special Agent…the lying, treacherous bastard who’d been shot by the man Lily had killed last month. Scott knew about him.
The dead might not scare her, but they could be damned annoying. “If you’re here to give me more of your pearls of wisdom—”
“No. At least…” He paused uncertainly. “I don’t think so.”
Drummond had been many things in life. Uncertain wasn’t one of them. The novelty of it interrupted her more thoroughly than his words, stirring an unwanted curiosity. “What, then?”
“I don’t know.” He crossed his arms, scowling. “You think I picked you to fix on? You think this is my idea of a great way to spend eternity—popping in to watch you brush your goddamn teeth? What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
Lily stood. Whatever she’d hoped for today, it wasn’t happening now. Not with Drummond hanging around. “In what way can that be considered any of your business?”
“Just curious. It makes things easier for me, but somehow I don’t think that’s why you came.”
“What do you mean, it makes it easier for you?”
“Easier for me to show up. Places like this, the veil is thin.”
Amusement jabbed at her, half funny and half painful. “I wish Mullins could hear you talking about ‘the veil’ like some TV psychic.”
He snorted. “That would chap his ass, wouldn’t it? You like to hang out at the graves of people you’ve killed?”
“How do you know whose grave this is?”
“I can read.”
“And you know who Helen was.”
“Did you think I didn’t do any digging before I set out to get you?”
Drummond might have gone spectacularly wrong, but he’d been a good agent before that—savvy, smart, and thorough. Of course he knew who Helen was, knew that Lily had killed her. God only knew what else he’d dug up about her. “Go away.”
“Don’t get all huffy. I’ve got a proposition.”
“Does it involve you leaving me alone?”
“And where the hell would I go?”
“How should I know? Obviously you don’t have to hang around me every minute. You were gone for over a month.”
“A month?” That rattled him. “I was…I think I was sleeping. But not the whole time. I was at the courthouse with you just now when—”
She scowled. “I didn’t see you.” Supposedly Drummond couldn’t see or hear the world without manifesting, at least to the drifting-white-mist stage.
“You didn’t look up, and I was…” His mouth kept moving, but all she heard was silence. He stopped, scowled, and tried again. Midway through, his mouthed words became speech again. “…show up all the way in some places. And talking is goddamn hard, too, so stop interrupting.”
“You’re not really talking, you know. No movement of air, which is why no one else hears you.” It had to be some kind of mindspeech, however much it sounded like regular speech to her.
He snorted. “Like I hadn’t figured that out. Listen, I think I know what I’m supposed to do. Why I didn’t just die or go to hell or whatever.” His eyes burned with intensity. “I’m supposed to be your partner.”
It was so ludicrous she had to laugh. “Yeah, that’ll happen.” She collected Scott with a glance and started for the road. Drummond tried to grab her arm. His hand passed right through her, of course, so after a disgusted grimace he kept pace beside her. At least that’s what it looked like—as if he were walking, his feet pushing against the ground the way hers did.