But Rule didn’t ask the questions that were beginning to burn in him. Instead he asked, “How did you do it? How did you hold yourself together for nine bloody long days with Adam missing?”
Now Jasper looked at him. At first he didn’t speak. His face said plenty, though. It spoke of despair. “What in the world gave you the impression I’ve held myself together?”
“You planned and executed a remarkable theft. You didn’t fall apart when you were tied to a chair and bullets started flying. You complained about not being able to think, but you kept doing it anyway.”
“I’ve screwed up every step of the way.” Jasper looked at the hands he’d clasped between his knees. “I’ve finally gotten around to really thinking, you see. You say you’re supposed to know where Lily is, but you don’t. Cullen’s supposed to be able to find things with his spells, but he can’t. It’s the same thing blocking you both, isn’t it? The prototype.”
Rule kept his breathing even. He could fake calm, even if he couldn’t feel it. “I think so, yes.”
“Then Friar’s got them both. Lily and the prototype. Which means I’ve nothing left to negotiate with. Nothing I can use to buy Adam’s life. Which means…” He drew a long, shuddering breath. “He may already be dead.”
“We don’t know that. Friar wants Cullen, too.”
“But does he need me to get him? I don’t see why.”
“Listen to me.” Rule gripped his arm. “Adam is alive. Until we see his dead body, he’s alive, and we’re going to get him back. Just like I’m going to get Lily back, and quickly. To hell with what logic says. Logic hasn’t served us all that well, has it?”
Jasper blinked. Took a shuddery breath, and straightened. “Right. He’s alive. Of course he’s alive. And we’re going to get him back.”
“We’ll get both of them.” A quiet electronic gong sounded in Rule’s pocket. It was a ringtone he seldom heard, and it startled him enough that it took him a moment to say, “I have to take this call. That’s Lily’s grandmother.”
“Oh, Jesus.”
He’d have to tell Beth, too. And soon. Perhaps Madame Yu would take on the task of telling Lily’s parents. Rule steeled himself and answered. “Madame Yu—”
“When were you going to tell me that something has happened to my granddaughter?” an imperious voice demanded.
“You know? But—how?”
She made a small, dignified snort. “Sam, of course. How would her teacher not know when she—bah, this language lacks words. She is hidden from him. He says she did not do this, and so we know that someone else did. What did they do?”
“She’s been taken. I think…” It was hard to say. “I think by Friar’s people. I can’t find her. I can’t sense where she is.”
“But she is alive.”
“Yes. That much I’m sure of.” The rest came out without him having a clue he was going to say it. “It’s my fault. I tricked her, manipulated her into doing what I thought would be safer than going with me. I was wrong. It was a setup.”
“Bah.”
What?
“You take too much on yourself. I can trick Lily. Your father maybe can. You? No. You are sneaky sometimes, but not so good as that. You think you fooled Lily? I think she got what she wanted. Now, I will be there as soon as possible. I do not know when. Planes are fast, but airports are not.”
“You’re—Madame Yu—”
“Sam cannot do this. He has foreseen certain events. He says it is not foreseeing, but I lack another word to describe his knowledge. He will be very busy today. I do not tell you more about this. Do not ask. He is busy, but I will come.” She hung up.
Rule sat there looking at the phone in his hand.
“She didn’t take it well, I guess,” Jasper said. “Hard to give that kind of news.”
“No…no, you don’t understand. But then, you haven’t met her.” Slowly Rule looked up, relief blooming inside. He felt like he had as a small child, waking from some terrible nightmare to find his father’s hand on his shoulder. The sudden bone-deep reassurance wasn’t logical, wasn’t reasonable. But it was real. “It’s okay. It’s good. Grandmother is coming.”
THIRTY-FOUR
LILY woke to the soothing lilt of Brahms’s “Lullaby.” Her head throbbed and ached the way it had the time a three-hundred-pound perp threw her against a wall. Or like it had on one miserable morning of her freshman year, when she’d decided that nothing, absolutely nothing, was worth getting a hangover that bad.
But she hadn’t been drinking or playing arrest-the-perp, had she? What…wait, there had been a perp, and Lily had told her she was under arrest, and then she’d been…shit. Captured. That was the word.
The quick spurt of panic cleared the fog from her brain. She made herself lie still and take stock with her eyes closed. She lay on something soft that sure felt like a bed. Good news: she wasn’t naked and the only injury seemed to be to her head. Her arms rested at her sides, unbound. She didn’t hear anything but the Brahms, nor did she smell anything in particular. Rule would have, but…
The panic this time was an ocean, not a spurt. Her eyes flew open and the light made her headache worse, but the pain in her head was drowned by the cold fear racing through her. After an endless, drenched moment, she realized the mate bond was screwy, not severed. Rule wasn’t dead. He wasn’t dead, but she couldn’t tell where he was. When she tried to use the mate-sense, it felt like he was everywhere, in every direction, and she had no idea how far away he was. When she tried harder she felt queasy. Motion sick, like when she’d seen that On Motion film at the IMAX and the crazy 3-D zooming around had forced her to shut her eyes so she wouldn’t puke.
Lily lay very still and waited for her stomach and heartbeat to settle. Her mouth was dry. Her head hurt. If she couldn’t find Rule, she had to assume he couldn’t find her, either. She’d been captured by a furry woman, and Rule couldn’t find her.
Couldn’t find her that way. He’d still be trying.
Unless he’d been captured, too, and was in the room next to hers. She didn’t know. With the mate-sense wonky, he could be on the other side of the wall and she wouldn’t know it. Or he might have been hurt at the middle school. Badly hurt.
Keep taking stock, she told herself firmly.
Okay, point number one: her head hurt, but it wasn’t the kind of crippling pain that suggested serious injury. It was an all-over ache, too, not localized like it would be with a concussion. Number two: she was dressed, she was not tied up—in fact, someone had tossed a blanket over her, as if they cared if she got cold while she was out cold. Number three: the whiteness overhead was an ordinary ceiling, not an underground cavern, which was encouraging. The last sidhe she’d tangled with had stashed his captives underground where he…
A small ball of light bobbed into her field of view. A mage light. Common in sidhe realms, not so common here. She’d seen a lot of mage lights in that underground cavern.
She frowned at the glowing ball. Rethna hadn’t been able to block the mate-sense, and he hadn’t just been sidhe—he’d been a sidhe lord. And when Rule had been dragged to the hell realm, she’d still known his direction. When an ancient being had locked Lily and Cynna in an underground bunker warded so tightly Cynna’s Gift couldn’t tell up from down, the mate bond had still worked.
And somehow Cullen’s prototype could do what Rethna, hell, and the Chimei couldn’t? It didn’t make sense.
Enough taking stock. She needed to see where the hell she was. Expecting it to make her head worse, she sat up.