Lupi 06 - Blood Magic

me."
    "That's not an answer."
    He smiled and kept looking straight ahead. "And I'm not an idiot."
    Lily smiled, too, as the chief's secretary announced herself in her familiar smoker's growl. It was good to be home.
     
    Behind the 7-Eleven, next to a full and fragrant Dumpster, a small man was doubled over, laughing. "Oh, did you see the woman's face?" he said in Chinese. "Did you see? 'Oh, help me, help me, the big snake wants to eat me up'!" He added the last in a squeaky falsetto and slapped his thigh. "Crash she goes! Bam!"
    He looked a bit like an Asian Hercule Poirot with his slicked-back hair, though he lacked the impressive mustache. Mostly, though, he looked ordinary - somewhere over forty with dark, merry eyes and a stubby nose. He wore athletic shoes with white socks, baggy khaki shorts, and a T-shirt that read, "San Diego Chargers."
    The laughter faded to a grinning giggle. "You were brilliant, my dear, brilliant as always," he said to the air beside him. He spoke English now, with a decided British accent. He bent to pick up the black cap that had fallen off while he was carried away with laughter, revealing a bald spot on top of his head.
    "Did she?" He frowned as he straightened, but the frown slipped away as if his face had been greased by good humor. "I didn't see. Ah, well, the blood is there, I suppose, or it could be coincidence. And she only looked. She couldn't see you."
    "Oh, of course." He began walking in the idle way of a man with no special need to be one place rather than another, nodding now and again as if in response to his invisible friend. He passed the small group of bystanders in the parking lot, breaking up now that the show was mostly over. None of them noticed him.
    "But I'll take care of him for you, my beautiful one," he said as he stepped into the street after looking carefully both ways. "You know I will. Soon now, eh?" He smiled. "Won't they be confused! I wish I could... No, no, I won't linger. I understand the difficulty for you. But," he added wistfully, "it would be great fun to stay and see their faces after I kill him."

 
    FOUR

    The mountains east of San Diego were almost always hotter than the city. Their higher elevation didn't make up for losing the cooling power of the ocean. But the sun was down now, and in the small valley that held the village at the heart of Nokolai Clanhome, the temperature had dropped to a balmy seventy-eight.
    The moon wasn't yet up, but Lily kept track of that sort of thing these days. She knew it would rise half full just after midnight. The clan's meeting field was alive with song, laughter, and people - far more people than actually lived there - and Lily was relieved bordering on smug.
    The baby shower had gone off without a hitch. And the baby party was going splendidly.
    Lily threaded her way through the crowded meeting ground. Most of the shower guests - the human guests - had left. The number of adult lupi actually living at Clanhome varied, but was usually around fifty. Most of the rest of the party guests lived fairly close to Clanhome, but she didn't know all of them.
    They all knew who she was, though - a bit disconcerting, that, but she smiled and nodded when strangers greeted her.
    There were also dogs and kids. Lots of kids. Both raced through the crowd in shoals like minnows swimming a living current. Toby was undoubtedly part of one of those shoals, though she hadn't seen him since he finished bolting his food and jumped up with the announcement that he and "the guys" were going to play tag.
    Lupus tag was a complex game involving teams, age-adjusted rules, multiple targets, and elements of hide-and-seek. And running. Lots of running.
    So far, becoming a parent to Rule's son was almost too easy. The only hard part was prying the boy loose from the rest of the clan. Lupi adored babies and children of all ages, and they saw no reason Toby shouldn't spend all his time at Clanhome.
    One person wasn't at the party anymore. The Rhej, the party's third host, had eaten with Lily, Rule, Isen, and Toby, given Cullen his gift, then headed back to her house partway up the slope that bordered the west side of the little valley.
    She liked people fine, she'd said. Just not so many all at once.
    Most of the adults were male, and most of them weren't wearing much. Among adults, male clan outnumbered female about three to one, and lupi possessed no body modesty whatsoever. Every man in Lily's sight was bare-chested, bare-footed, and