Inked

left the voicemail. She touched it.

    Headed 4 clanhome. CU 2nite.

    Fear slid through her, soft and slick as vomit. Rule never used texting abbreviations. He loathed them. And he wasn’t headed for Clanhome.
    He was in trouble. From Adele, from Friar, she didn’t know which—but he was in trouble. And she had no car, no backup.
    Or did she? She spun to face Mannie, thumbing through her contact list. “You have a car. A Mustang.”
    “Yeah, I told you…what’s wrong?”
    “I need it.”

11
    THE Mustang jolted over one last rut and rocked to a stop in the packed earth at the base of a craggy hill. “We’re there,” Lily said into her phone. “Putting you on speaker now.” She did so and slipped the phone in her pocket, clipping it to be sure it stayed.
    Steve’s body hadn’t actually been left on the hiking trail, but slightly off it, in a small cul-de-sac walled by rock and packed earth. There were two ways to reach that spot—the trail itself, which was used often enough that it had a parking area at its foot. And the route she’d be taking.
    No one came this way, according to Mannie. It was a rugged scramble with no rewarding views. He knew about it because he coursed all over the hills gleaning flowers and roots and stuff.
    So did Adele, but it seemed she hadn’t come this way today. Her car wasn’t here.
    “Jason hasn’t reached the parking area yet,” she said, throwing open her door. “But he’s close. We aren’t waiting.”
    “Okay.” Mannie climbed out of the passenger’s side. “What about the others?”
    She’d called out backup of the unofficial kind—Jason, who was close. And Rule’s brother Benedict, who was not. But he was in charge of security at Nokolai Clanhome, and he was good. Very, very good. He was bringing some of his people. “ETA forty to fifty minutes. We’ll move in and I’ll assess the situation. If it’s stable, I’ll wait until they’re in place.”
    “If not?”
    “Then I don’t wait. You remember the signals?”
    “You’ll tap my shoulder if you’re close enough. Otherwise you’ll tap your head or face or whatever you think I’ll see. One tap means stop, freeze, hold. Two taps means keep going or come closer. Three taps—get the hell out of there any way I can.”
    He answered easily enough, but he was taut. Jumpy. She was insane to bring him. “It’s okay to be nervous, you know. I’d be worried if you weren’t. Just remember your role—guide and consultant on the magic stuff, if needed. Not Rambo.”
    “No Rambo shit. Right. I’m cool with that. Did you ever notice how everyone but Rambo gets killed?”
    “Yeah,” she said dryly. “I have. Let’s move.”
    This part she didn’t like. Every instinct said she needed to get out in front. She had the badge, the gun, the training. She couldn’t be affected by charms or whatever magical hoodoo Adele might pull.
    But she didn’t know the way. Mannie did. Instinct lost this round.
    He led her around a boulder the size of a Buick standing on end. There was a path of sorts—at least, there was a route up among the tumbled rocks.
    For maybe fifteen minutes they went up—almost straight up at times, scrambling over rock in all shapes and sizes, slithering up scree. Slipping a time or two, but not badly. Here the stone was granite, some loose, some fixed, earth’s tawny bones poking through where the skin was thin. Many of the larger boulders bore a reddish residue from the aerial spraying used on a wildfire a few years back. Grass sprouted in the oddest places. So did pines, scrub oak, and thorny manzanita.
    Lily’s breath was labored by the time the ground leveled out some, and she’d scraped one palm. No snakes, though. If they made it the rest of the way without seeing a snake, she’d count herself lucky. They set out along a narrow vee between two steep, stony shoulders shrugged up by some distant geological upset. About ten paces in, Mannie stopped, looked at her, and pointed.
    Smoke wisped up in a tattered tail, barely visible against the blue of the sky.
    She nodded grimly. Smoke meant a campfire, which meant Adele Blanco, not Robert Friar, waited ahead. That’s what she’d expected, but confirmation was good. Lily took out her phone. No bars.
    No surprise. They’d thought they would lose coverage as they moved up among the rocky hills. She had to hope Jason spotted the smoke, too, and avoided getting a whiff of it. Lily tapped Mannie’s shoulder twice.
    They were