Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

ordered for them both. She sat where she could keep an eye on the door so she'd see him when he got there. That also gave her a view of the TV, which was showing a Mexican soap opera.
    It was just like old times. T.J. had always insisted that junior detectives were obliged by code, courtesy, and common decency to pick up the check for their seniors. Now his story was that rich FBI agents could damn well afford to treat their underpaid local cousins.
    While she waited for the food and for T.J., she took out her notebook. She hadn't made any notes yet about her talk with Sam. She needed to get the details down, get her thoughts moving - and to see if she could. Would the treaty stop her from recording information?
    First, though, she made a couple phone calls. She got Rule's voice mail, which made her drum her fingers. She left him a message... a brief, businesslike message asking what he'd told Cynna and Cullen.
    It made her stomach hurt. She didn't understand why. It hadn't been all that big a fight. Sure, she'd been mad, and who wouldn't be? He'd picked a helluva time to get all huffy about the wedding. He...
    Was right, dammit. Anger drained out like a balloon deflating. She'd overreacted all the way around. The binding the damned treaty placed on her infuriated her, and she'd kicked out at Rule. That wasn't fair.
    Rule was right about something else. She knew in her gut it was right to marry him, but... Well, some people might be fine going with their gut, but she needed reasons. They were bound together for life whether or not they got a license from the state, so why marry?
    Instead of figuring that out, she'd pretended the question didn't matter. In some obscure way she'd felt it was disloyal to ask questions about marrying Rule.
    Lily sighed. It wasn't like her to avoid asking.
    She wasn't the only one in the wrong, though. Rule's anger must have been simmering awhile, but he could have brought it up earlier or left it on the back burner a little longer. Like maybe until they weren't trying to stop an undying being from wrecking the city without precipitating a wave of illegal immigration that really might destroy the fabric of civilization.
    She tapped her pen on her notebook. How many Chimei were there, anyway? How did you stop them if they weren't entirely physical?
    Time to get some things on paper. First she jotted down the gist of what Sam had told them about the Chimei. The treaty didn't stop her. Maybe it would keep her from showing them to anyone? She made a note to find out, then added her conversation with Li Qin, then the call from Ruben. Then sat there, tapping her pen against the table.
    Some three hundred years ago, Grandmother had killed the Chimei's previous sorcerous lover. And that was weird, thinking of Grandmother being around longer than the United States... but the point was that killing the Chimei's lover would stop her. But it was a temporary solution, and not one Lily could use, anyway. She was a cop. She arrested people. She didn't assassinate them.
    Of course, Lily could have legally killed the Chimei if the Chimei had been killable. The Chimei wasn't human. The law was in a huge muddle about nonhumans, but Congress had given Unit agents wide discretionary powers right after the Turning, when any number of creatures had been blown here by the power winds.
    But she wasn't some legalized hit man, dammit. That wasn't what she did.
    She also wasn't entirely human herself.
    Her thoughts hitched - just this quick, mental hiccup that interrupted her as thoroughly as a siren.
    She understood why it bothered her. It upset her sense of who and what she was. Until last year, she hadn't even thought of herself as Gifted. People didn't think of sensitives that way because blocking out magic seemed the antithesis of working it.
    Then she'd found out that being a sensitive was a type of Gift. That had unsettled her, but not for long. Once she thought about it, it made sense. This, though, was like... It was like finding out she was mostly female, but not entirely.
    What did it mean to "partake of dragon nature"?
    You have already begun to manifest one ability common to dragons, Sam had said. He'd said something about her overlooking it, too.
    Mindspeech? She hadn't done that except with him, and her conversations with the black dragon were hard to overlook. How could it be possible for her to use mindspeech with non-dragons when her Gift prevented her from using magic? Did she even want