Lily had an urge to ask Isen what Brenda’s favorite color was, what she’d gotten for Christmas last week, how old she’d been when she lost her first tooth. He might know. He seemed to know everything about every member of his clan. “So she’s been here since May?”
“No, she went off to college in September, but then the events at the Humans First rallies made her unsafe there, so she returned here. At first she seemed to resent that, but I don’t believe she does now.”
Being spoken about instead of to had the expected effect. Brenda went from a simmer to a boil. “I don’t see what any of that has to do with anything! What do you care where I lived when I was little?”
“That’s how investigations are,” Lily said blandly. “I ask all sorts of nosy questions that, in the end, turn out not to lead anywhere. But every now and then one ends up mattering a lot. Who’s your boyfriend here?”
Brenda blinked. “What—I don’t know what you mean.”
“Would you rather I said lover? I suppose it does sound more adult. You have a lover here, don’t you?”
That didn’t make her hide behind her hair. Instead she gave her head a proud little toss, shaking her hair back. “None of your business.”
“It is, you know. Especially if he isn’t Nokolai. And he isn’t, is he, Brenda?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t hide, either. Her head stayed up. Her eyes defied Lily to pry anything out of her.
She was so very young. Lily didn’t make it a question this time, but a statement of fact. “Your lover asked you about Cullen Seabourne’s workshop.”
Brenda didn’t answer, but Rule did. Briefly his ears and tail drooped. He nodded.
She shook her head. “Sorry. I don’t get it.”
“He means,” Isen said, “that she felt guilt over your question.”
A nod plus drooping tail…“ ‘Bad dog’ equals guilt, huh?”
Rule snorted. That could mean anything from laughter to disgust, but this time probably meant something along the lines of “Don’t be ridiculous.” Lupi did not like to be compared to dogs.
And she was sidetracking, big-time. The next part would be…tricky. She thought she knew what Isen was doing, but if she was wrong, things were apt to skip the handbasket and go straight to hell. She looked steadily at Brenda, letting the silence drag out. Finally she spoke quietly. “Brenda. Look to your left.”
More out of surprise than any desire to obey, she did, then frowned at Lily. “What?’
“See all those people sitting over there? Over forty people came forward when Isen asked. Forty people who aren’t worried about talking about who asked them questions about Cullen’s workshop. You’re worried about it, though, aren’t you? So worried you won’t admit you discussed it with your lover. You’re protecting him. You think you won’t be hurt, but he might be.”
“He didn’t talk to me about it,” she said quickly. “It was someone else. I didn’t want to get h-her in trouble, that’s all.”
She was such a bad liar. Lily didn’t need Rule’s slow headshake, not with the way the girl stumbled over the pronoun. “You think he needs protection. You’re afraid he asked too many questions. That his interest wasn’t simple curiosity.”
Silence.
“Do you think I can’t find out who he is?”
“It wasn’t him. I told you that. It was a woman. She’s not connected to the clans at all. I sold her the information. I was angry, like Isen said. I didn’t like being here instead of at university, so I-I sold the information.”
Rule was shaking his head.
“Stop,” Isen growled. He walked up to them—no, it was more like a slow stalk, ending three feet from Brenda. He didn’t say a word, but slowly she turned to face him. Slowly her expression changed as defiance faded into fear.
Isen continued to stare at her as he boomed out, “She has confessed! She admits she sold the information about the workshop to a human. She has betrayed Nokolai willfully, knowingly—”
“No!”
The slim young man whose shout answered Isen stood among the Laban contingent.
The young man started toward them. The man to his left grabbed his arm. “Hank—”
He shook his clanmate off and kept coming. “She’s innocent,” he said loudly. “The Chosen is right. She hopes to protect me. I was the one who sold the information, not Brenda. She had no idea I would do that.”
Lily released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. She’d been right. This is what Isen had been going for—not poor Brenda’s bungled confession, but the one they were about to hear.
Of course, things were still going to be tricky. He was lying, too.
TWELVE
HANK Jamison was twenty-seven—an adult, by lupi standards, but a very young one. He was tall and slim and beautiful, with large, dark eyes and an extra helping of the physical grace all lupi possess. He looked like a Renaissance poet who moonlighted as a swashbuckler. He should have been banned from all contact with women under the age of forty.
Hank insisted calmly and definitely on his guilt. His Rho had nothing to do with this, nothing at all. He’d been greedy. He’d wanted money, and someone—he refused to say who—had paid him well to give up Cullen’s secrets. He asserted all this without a quiver of emotion.
Hank’s physical control was good, and he was smart enough to clam up once he’d made his announcement. Rule smelled no guilt on him. He wouldn’t, though. Hank was lying, but Rule wasn’t his Lu Nuncio, and he was trying to protect both his lover and his Rho. No guilt for him there.
An hour after Hank’s confession, Lily was on her way back to Isen’s home with Isen and Rule, who was two-footed again. Cynna had left to get Ryder from the tenders; Cullen had left for his workshop to run some kind of test. He was still obsessed with why his ward hadn’t made flames whoosh up. And Hank was in leg-irons at the guard barracks. He wasn’t locked up because there was no way to imprison someone at Clanhome. Lupi didn’t believe in that. Step far enough out of line and you might get dead, but you wouldn’t be locked up.
Brenda Hyatt would be formally removed from Nokolai. The ceremony of expulsion was different for a clan female than it was for a lupus since the mantle wasn’t involved, but it went by the same name: seco.
Lily had checked a few things with the other witnesses before Isen dismissed everyone. As she’d suspected, Brenda hadn’t been the only one Hank had talked to about Cullen’s device. Just the most cooperative.
As they were leaving the meeting field, someone brought Isen his phone. He used it to call Leo, the Laban Rho…who wasn’t answering. As they neared Isen’s house he put his phone up without leaving a message.
“Does that make him look more guilty, not answering your call?” Lily asked.
“Leo never answers my calls right away.” Isen opened the big front door.
“Doesn’t he have to answer when you call?”
“He has to obey.”
Rule filled in that sparse answer. “It’s as you and Cynna were discussing earlier. Laban is subordinate, but their Rho is very much a dominant. Leo will call Isen back—I assume you left a callback number?” he added to his father.
“Of course. I believe I’d like coffee. Would you two care to join me?”
“Sure,” Lily said. Might as well. She wouldn’t be getting to sleep anytime soon. “So he’s playing some kind of dominance game?”
Isen headed off toward the kitchen, so it was Rule who replied. “More a way of balancing dominance and status. The two are connected, but they aren’t the same thing. Leo’s status is subordinate to Isen’s, but he’s dominant, so he prefers to be the one calling, not the one called upon. Isen tolerates this, and generally Leo is careful not to test that tolerance. He calls back quickly. You may have noticed that Isen didn’t leave a message.”