Lover Beware

her midriff-hugging top exposed. She set Lily’s water in front of her without glancing in her direction. Her eyes were wholly on Turner, huge with fascination…and fear.
    And he knew. Awareness of the girl’s fear was there in the flicker of his eyes, the softness of his voice as he ordered coffee.
    “I’ll have a cup, too,” Lily said, peeling the paper from her straw. “Make it blond.”
    The waitress nodded and left.
    Lily crossed her arms on the table and leaned forward. “Is it because you’re a lupus? Or do you get all this attention because you’re a celebrity?”
    He didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I’m probably the only lupus she’ll ever meet—knowingly, at least.”
    Lily nodded as a piece fell into place. “That’s the reason for all the black, isn’t it? I’ve never seen a photograph of you where you’re wearing colors. Just black. You want people to recognize you. You want them to know they’re meeting a lupus.”
    Amazingly, a touch of color sharpened those hard cheekbones. “Black is good theater.”
    “And your face is unforgettable. When people see you, they remember. You do the mystery bit well—a hint of glamour, the allure of the forbidden or the dangerous. That’s the image you want people to associate with lupi. You’re sort of a poster boy for your people.”
    “Thank you.”
    He was insulted. She grinned. “You don’t like being called a boy or cocky, which is for puppies. I think you’ve started to believe your image.”
    All at once he grinned back. “Maybe I have.”
    The grin transformed his face, turning it from dark and disturbing to someone outrageously appealing—but someone who wore ragged jeans on weekends, played baseball with the guys, and changed the oil in his car. Lily didn’t even think about trying to reply. She was too caught up in that grin, what it did to his eyes and the way it lifted her heart.
    “Here you go.” The waitress deposited their coffee, dumping a couple of containers of creamer beside Lily’s cup.
    Lily hadn’t so much as glimpsed her approach. Shaken, she tore one of the creamers open and dumped half the contents into her coffee.
    Had he used some kind of magic on her? Or did it just spill out from him naturally, without his willing it? If it wasn’t magic…she didn’t want to think about what it would mean if she could react like that to him without any magic involved. “Does magic have a smell?”
    His eyebrows lifted. “It can. Why?”
    “You knew the attacker was lupus. Our lab did, too—at least, they could tell it was someone of the Blood, because magic leaves traces. I wondered if you were smelling the same kind of traces they found.”
    “I don’t think so. Magic does have a distinctive scent, but only when it’s active. When a spell is being performed, for example. What I identified was the smell of lupus, not magic itself.”
    “Is there anything else you can tell me about the killer?”
    He frowned and sipped his coffee. She was not surprised to see that he drank it black. “He wasn’t a juvenile.”
    “You can tell that from the scent?”
    “No. The body wasn’t eaten.”
    Coffee sloshed in her cup. She set it down carefully. “Explain.”
    “It’s pure superstition that an adult lupus will be overcome by bloodlust and attack whatever moves. Young lupi lose themselves in the beast, but we learn control. If we didn’t, we really would be the ravening beasts depicted in movies like Witch Hunt .”
    “So a child or adolescent wouldn’t have acquired control yet.”
    “Not a child. The Change arrives with puberty.”
    She thought of a particularly improbable photograph she’d seen while waiting in the checkout line at the grocery store recently. A woman had been sitting up in a hospital bed with several blanket-wrapped bundles tucked into her arms. Bundles with puppy faces. “The National Tattler would be disappointed to hear that.”
    “I doubt the Tattler allows facts to interfere with its editorial focus.”
    “I guess not. Talk about raging hormones.” Lily gave herself a moment to think by sipping her coffee. This was completely new information. She hadn’t heard it, read it, anywhere. Why would he trust her with this knowledge? Was it true?
    “You’re saying that a young lupus kills. And eats what he kills.”
    “If he is allowed to, yes. But we are careful with our children. None go through the Change unsupervised.”
    Her lips twitched. Embarrassed, she took a quick sip