Lupi 04 - Night Season

magical, which makes them the proper custodians for the medallion.”
    â€œShe doesn’t object to the way it eats brains?”
    â€œSidhe do haughty better than a cat. I asked. She gave me to understand it was none of my business.” Cullen paused. “If I tell her where the medallion is before it bonds with a holder, I get all sorts of goodies. Spells. Knowledge.”
    â€œShe has your number.”
    â€œActually, I’ve got hers. Or her call-me.” He held out a hand. A small topaz rested in his palm. “This summons her.”
    In spite of everything, curiosity pricked at her. “How does it work?”
    â€œI haven’t figured that out yet.” His fingers closed, and he slid the topaz into the pocket of the loose jacket he wore. “Haven’t figured out how she vanished, either.”
    Cynna’s heart kicked up into her throat. She swallowed. After failing to pummel the elf-woman, she hadn’t stuck around for explanations. Once the faerie bitch vanished, so had Cynna—more prosaically, however, by running out into the hall. Gan had inadvertently helped by showing up just then, full of chatter. Then Steve had arrived, then their servants, then Ruben, and they’d been busy ever since, getting ready to travel the river again.
    Cynna steadied her voice. “She must have faked disappearing. That’s probably one type of glamour—disappearing.”
    â€œGlamour is illusion. She can probably make herself invisible, and maybe she could even fool my sense of smell, but she vanished to my sorcerous vision, too. I don’t think that’s possible unless she literally, physically wasn’t there anymore.”
    â€œTranslocation?” That was a mythical ability, one only adepts were supposed to be able to use. “We are so out of our league. If sidhe can do stuff like that, why can’t they find the medallion themselves?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    She caught herself heaving a great, huge, pity-party sigh. But if ever she was entitled to throw one, this would be the time. “I’m going to turn in,” she said abruptly and turned to go, her personal mage light obediently tagging along.
    He caught her arm. “Cynna—”
    â€œLook, I’m not up to a heart-to-heart tonight. I know better, okay? You’re lupus, and I understand what that means. I shouldn’t have expected…well, anything. I know that. It doesn’t help.”
    His voice was tight, frustrated. “She glammed me.”
    â€œYeah. But you wouldn’t see anything wrong with having sex with her. Only you’ve got it in your head you need legal standing over the little rider, so you’re trying to convince me—”
    â€œI won’t be with anyone else. You’ve my word on it.”
    â€œYou’re not listening to me! I don’t want you to squeeze yourself into some other shape. That won’t work. It’ll make you unhappy and you’ll resent it and then we won’t be friends any—”
    He blurred and she went flying. Flying backward, courtesy of him tossing her through the air. Before she landed, he’d spun back around and sent reality whirling.
    Cynna had seen lupi Change. She’d never seen Cullen do it, but she recognized the process. Still, what with landing hard on her ass and watching impossibility take slices out of Cullen’s shape and whirl it into something new, it took her a second to see why he’d Changed.
    Something—two somethings—were climbing over the rail, silent as ghosts and blacker than the night around them.
    â€œIncoming!” she yelled and shot her mage light higher, slapping it with enough power to make it split into five spots of light.
    Slugs. That’s what they looked like, though they were man-shaped with the usual arrangement of limbs. They were tall and moist in a way that had nothing to do with the river, and their faces were strictly ugh—lumpy and misshapen, noseless, with no chins below the puckered sphincters that had to be mouths, though they looked more as if someone had gotten confused during assembly and put assholes in their heads instead of their butts.
    Cynna took all that in while scrambling to her feet. She had a split second to glimpse some kind of harnesses on their chests before a huge red wolf launched himself at them.
    Cullen was unbelievably fast in man-form. He was even faster as a wolf. The