Inked

moment, her face glowed. “Steve loved me.”
    “I guess you would know.”
    She grinned suddenly. “It’s fun, trying to guess what you’re feeling. I don’t mean he was in love with me. He wasn’t. I mean that he loved me. And no, Steve didn’t have a big sense of privacy. A lot of lupi don’t, which is why I like being around them. But Steve really cared about me. He liked me. He liked being with me, both for sex and just for company, and it didn’t bother him if I was with other men sometimes. It truly didn’t.”
    “I understand,” Lily said carefully, “that sex is different for empaths.”
    Mariah giggled like the teenager she’d been only a year ago. “We’re the easiest of easy lays. I’ve heard that isn’t true for all empaths—some of them don’t like to be touched at all, but maybe they’ve got a stronger Gift than I do or something. For me, well, if someone wants me and he isn’t an asshole, and I can make him feel wonderful, and I know it would feel wonderful to me, too…because it does,” she added frankly. “It feels fantastic, because I experience his feelings, too. So I get caught up in the moment real easy. But Steve didn’t mind. Mostly if men don’t mind it’s because they don’t care about you, but Steve did care.” Sadness swept over her face. “He loved me.”
    “I’m sorry for your loss.” And ready to admit that Rule was right. This fragile, oddly gallant young woman hadn’t killed the man she loved. She truly wasn’t capable of it. “You said earlier there was something you wanted to ask me.”
    “Oh. Oh, yes.” She looked down, toying with the bead in her eyebrow. “Nothing I know because of my Gift is evidence, right?”
    “No, it wouldn’t be admissible. Nothing I learn from my Gift is admissible, either, though I’m allowed to consider it in the process of an investigation. Just as I could consider something you tell me, even if it couldn’t be used in court.”
    Mariah nodded without looking up. “I guess I’m not sure enough to tell you about this…this thing that’s bothering me. I could be wrong.”
    “People tell me things they’re wrong about all the time. It’s my job to sort that out.”
    “But it would affect someone else.” She kept rubbing that little bead. “I need to think about it some more.”
    Lily tried another tack. “I’ve heard that empaths know when someone is lying.”
    “Hey, you’re a good guesser.” Mariah flashed her a smile and tucked one leg up on the couch. “I bet people lie to you all the time, too. You get where you sort of expect it. People do lie a lot.” She shook her head. “That was confusing to me when I was little, especially when they didn’t know they were lying. My father doesn’t always know. He makes himself think something is true when it isn’t, so when I was small I couldn’t tell when he was lying.”
    “Can you tell now?”
    “Well…not always. People say things they want to be true, or they say things they’re afraid are true, but they don’t know, so I pick up that fear or that wanting. When someone isn’t sure if what they’re saying is true, I can’t tell, either. I just know they aren’t sure. That’s why I told everyone little Stevie is Steve’s baby.”
    Lily blinked. “What?”
    “That’s what you’re wondering, isn’t it? Why did I lie? Or else, why did Steve lie? Because one of us has to be wrong, yet we stayed together. Or as much together as anyone is with a lupus,” she added practically. “Except for you and Rule.”
    “You’re saying that Steve wasn’t sure?”
    She nodded. “He said he was. He said he’d know if Stevie was his, but he wanted to be wrong. He wanted that badly, and that’s what I ‘heard’ when he told me Stevie wasn’t his—he wanted to be wrong. He wanted me to prove him wrong. And he could have been, couldn’t he? I used the fertility charm with him, not with anyone else.”
    “Why did you use a fertility charm?”
    “Because Steve wanted a baby so much, of course.” She glanced down at the sleeping bundle on the floor, her face soft and shining. “Not that I don’t want little Stevie for his own sweet self, because I do. But I guess I wouldn’t have thought of having a baby right now if Steve hadn’t wanted one so much.”
    “So you went to your friend Adele—”
    “No! Oh, sorry.” She flushed prettily. “I interrupted you. But I didn’t go to Adele. She came to me and offered to make the charm.