Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

I - I was standing beside him. Someone came up to congratulate us. I didn't know him, but Cullen called him Mike. They were talking when he... Cullen jerked, then he fell. He just collapsed. I don't know who was behind us. It was crowded. I didn't notice."
    Suddenly Cynna gripped Lily's arm, her fingers digging in. The bones of her face stood out starkly. "You'll find him. Or her. Whoever did this, you'll find them."
    In the face of that need, Lily didn't speak of jurisdictions. "I will. Cullen's going to make it, Cynna. He's got too much holding him here. The Rhej and Nettie will hold on to him in their way, but you and the baby - you'll keep him here, too."
    Cynna jerked out a single nod and looked at Cullen again. One hand went to her belly, rubbing gently. Her lips moved. Lily caught the words, just barely... "Hail Mary, full of grace... "
    Among her other improbabilities, Cynna was Catholic. Maybe that helped right now. Lily hoped so. She stood.
    Twenty or thirty people had collected where Isen told them to. They didn't talk to one another. They were waiting, as they'd been told.
    Lily shook her head, more aware than usual that lupi might look human - but they weren't. She headed for her witnesses, and had a small shock. One of those waiting so quietly was her sister Beth. Jason the hunk had his arm around her. Lily paused, absorbed that surprise, and asked, "Who's Mike?"
    "Me." The man who spoke was the skinniest lupus she'd ever seen. Not emaciated, but stringy, and well over six feet tall. His hair was a dusty black, straight and shaggy, his skin a pale caramel. He looked sick.
    "Last name?"
    "Hemmings."
    "Okay. I need you to come with me, Mike." But she didn't move right away, instead glancing behind her.
    Rule was coming. "You okay?" she whispered when he reached her.
    He made a single brushing-away gesture. "You're doing your job. In this case it's my job, too. I'll need to Change. I can probably tell even in this form if anyone lies, but we need better than 'probably.' " He glanced around. "The food tables. If you want to question people separately, we'll need some distance so the others won't overhear."
    "Okay. Good idea. I need one of the guards to do the things I'd have a uniform do - fetch witnesses, mostly. Can you - "
    "Of course." He gestured to the nearest guard, who happened to be Shannon, the youthful-looking redhead, and told him he was needed to help Lily with the witnesses.
    Then he pulled off his watch and tucked it in his jeans pocket. Then he Changed.
    Lily had watched the Change often enough. She still couldn't say precisely what she saw. Every time, she thought maybe this time she'd be able to really see the process, but she never did. Not quite.
    It wasn't like the way the movies depicted it, though - an arm sprouting fur and elongating into a leg, a face stretching into a muzzle. Nothing so clear and linear. Nor did she see the same thing a camera recorded. Rule had been caught on TV once when he Changed, and the space his body occupied had simply frizzed into visual static until he was wolf.
    It didn't help that Rule was extremely fast about the business, but her eyes couldn't track it when she watched other lupi Change, either.
    This time she tried watching out of the corner of her eye instead of head-on. Didn't help. Reality folded itself up, space and flesh bending into places her brain couldn't follow. Then it snapped back, and a wolf stood beside her. A really large wolf with black and silver fur.
    Lily glanced at Cullen - then forced herself to think, dammit, think about what she could do, not what lay outside her scope and skills. She bent to pick up the cutoffs that had fallen from Rule when he put reality on hold, then nodded at Mike and Shannon.
    "Let's go over to the food tables. Shannon, I need my purse." Her notebook was in it, for one thing. Also her weapon. "It's in the kitchen at the Center, in the cupboard by the rear door. Can you get that pretty quick, then join us?"
    He nodded and took her at her word. He ran. Since he went at lupus speed while they simply walked, he was on his way back before they reached the tables.
    Potato salad. Coleslaw. An opened pack of buns. A spill of plastic forks. For some stupid reason the sight of all that made her eyes burn. She swallowed. Swallowed again. This shouldn't have happened. Shouldn't have happened at all, but especially not here, where Cullen was safe. Happy. He'd been so blasted happy, without his usual guards of cynicism