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“Okay, so we won’t be partners. I’m still a resource, and you’re wasting me. I’ve got twice your experience. You can’t ignore that.”

He was right. That, too, was annoying. She stopped and looked at him. “Mostly you haven’t hung around long enough to be much use. You pop in; you pop out.”

“I…can be more available now.”

She waited. He didn’t elaborate, so she asked, “Is the ‘why’ to that one of those things you can’t explain?”

“Since I don’t understand it myself, the answer would be yes.”

“You told me you never met Friar.” Robert Friar, who’d started a war—or was resuming one begun over three thousand years ago. Robert Friar, who’d seen the slaughter of hundreds of people on his own side as a great way to take down the lupi, the Gifted, and everyone else who stood in the way of the one he served. Like the U.S. government.

“Just his buddy, Chittenden.”

“But you researched him. If you dug into my background, you must have checked him out, too, before throwing in on his side.”

“Sure, but I doubt I know anything you don’t. I used the Bureau’s files, talked to a couple people.”

“I’m asking for your professional opinion, not the details of your background check. Given what you learned then and what you know now, would you say he’s a sociopath?”

“Huh.” He thought that over, frowning and silent for a long moment. “Could be. There’s no record of the usual markers, like torturing baby bunnies when he was a cute little toddler. But sociopaths aren’t identical. Could be he’s what they call high functioning.”

“Really good at hiding what he is, you mean.”

“That, yeah, but also with better impulse control. Most sociopaths aren’t good at restraining themselves.”

“Most of the ones we know about. The ones who get locked up.”

“True.” He cocked his head. “You’re trying to get to know Friar better.”

She nodded and started walking again, but slowly. “Him and the one he serves.” The Old One who wanted to take over the world and remake it according to her standards. The one they never named, because that could draw her attention. The Great Bitch had to act through local agents because she was barred from their realm, thank God. Or thank the Old Ones who’d opposed her, like the lupi’s Lady, who’d shut the door on themselves in order to lock her out.

“That’s why you came here.” Drummond sounded pleased, like he’d turned a puzzle piece around and finally saw where it fit. “Not to poke around in your own psyche, but to try and dig into hers. Helen Whitehead’s. Whitehead belonged to that Old One you told me about.”

“She did. And she seems to have been a sociopath, too.”

Drummond’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah?”

“As was, possibly, one Patrick Harlowe…the other agent of hers that I know about.”

“That doesn’t say good things about the Old Bitch.”

“It doesn’t, does it? If—” A muffled gong sounded in her purse—the ringtone for calls forwarded from her official number. She dug out her phone. “Agent Yu here.”

It was T.J., aka Detective Thomas James, the man who’d trained Lily when she was a shiny new homicide cop. As he talked, Lily gave her watch one wistful glance. She owed T.J. a lot more than one delayed supper, though, so she spoke briskly enough when he paused. “Sure. I’ll be there in fifteen.” She put her phone away and glanced over her shoulder at Scott ten feet behind her. “Did you hear?”

“Only your side, and that your caller was male.”

Had Scott been a bit closer he’d heave heard T.J. just fine, but there were limits even to lupi hearing. She was gradually learning what those limits were. “An old buddy of mine from Homicide has a suspicious death. He wants me to see if magic was involved, but off the books. Unofficial.” Lily was a touch sensitive, able to feel magic tactilely, often able to identify what type it was—and unable to work it or be affected by it. If there was any magic on the body or the scene, she’d know. “I’ll be heading to 1221 Hammer, apartment 717.”

She texted Rule on her way out of the cemetery, letting him know she’d be late. Mike passed her before she reached the gate, moving at the lupi version of an easy lope—about as fast as she could sprint, in other words. And, to her annoyance, a filmy white shape drifted right along with her. When she reached her car, it solidified. Sort of.

“Sounds like we’ve got a case,” Drummond said.

“One of us might.” She unlocked the car and climbed in.

“Dammit, I can help.”

“Or you can trip me and laugh when I fall down.”

His features grew even more sour than usual. “I’ll be around when you change your mind. Uh…I can’t manifest at Clanhome unless you call me.”

Manifest. That was a word she never would have heard from Drummond when he was alive. “You can’t do it there?”

“No. It’s like…” His fingers opened and closed as if he were scratching at the air. “That’s closed to me, is all. Unless you call. Wherever you are, if you call me, I can manifest.”

“Huh.” Nokolai Clanhome was where she and Rule were living these days. As were a lot of others.

Rule’s people had always lived under threat, but they’d felt that their children were safe. Even during times of fierce persecution, lupi children had lived unmolested among humans who might have tossed them onto the fires along with the witches, had they known what they were. And the clans might fight among themselves, but kids were exempt. In all the years that Leidolf and Nokolai had been enemies, neither clan had worried that the other would strike at their children. Even mean, mad old Victor Frey, the Leidolf Rho who’d tricked Rule into assuming the mantle, then died before he could take it back, had left Toby alone.

Though the latter, Lily suspected, might be because Victor had known his history. Four hundred years ago, Leidolf and Nokolai had acted in rare and complete accord, along with Wythe. They’d acted with the explicit backing of every other clan…every clan but one. Bánach clan had been feuding with Cynyr. Bánach clan took the eight-year-old son of Cynyr’s Rho hostage—took him unharmed, but refused to release the boy until Cynyr submitted.

Bánach clan no longer existed.

Victor Frey had been vicious and maybe crazy toward the end of his life, but he had been Rho. No hatred, however fostered and festered, was as important as the survival of his clan. Toby had lived in North Carolina the first eight years of his life, deep in Leidolf’s territory. Victor had left Toby alone.

Robert Friar wouldn’t hesitate to take children. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. There had been kids at those Humans First rallies. That none had been killed was a matter of luck—luck and the furious defense of the lupi the Humans Firsters wanted gelded, imprisoned, or dead.

And so, in addition to bringing in extra fighters, Nokolai had gathered as many of its children as it could into Clanhome—children, and sometimes their mothers, and as many of their female clan as would come, too. Isen had also opened Clanhome to the children of their two subordinate clans in North America—Laban and Vochi, both of whom lacked the resources to house and defend all of their children at their own Clanhomes, though for opposite reasons.

“Is that why you haven’t pestered me this past month?” Lily asked. “Because I’ve been living at Clanhome, and you can’t manifest there?”

“No.” He shrugged stiffly. “There’s stuff I don’t understand about this being dead business, but that’s not why I was gone. I can manifest some places easier than others, but I can do it pretty much anywhere if you call me.”

She needed to go. Still she paused, looking at the ghost of a man who’d been her enemy and was now determined to be her partner. Or whatever. “Tell me something.”