Lupi 08 - Death Magic

had tried to charge admittance to the toilet—“I’ll keep them black bitches from messing with you, an’ you’ll owe me a favor, see?” Bad Teeth hadn’t taken “go away” for an answer, probably because Lily looked too little to be a threat. Lily had put her on the floor quick enough that the guards either didn’t notice or hadn’t felt a need to intervene.
    Turnover was high here. Bad Teeth was long gone. So was everyone else who’d been here when the cell door shut behind Lily.
    Lily had one of the prime spots. She sat on the floor and leaned against the wall near the front of the cell, where the air was a bit better. Three feet from her face were the torn jeans of a girl who probably wasn’t eighteen yet. She was clearly coming off something, shifting from foot to foot, staring out the bars with wild eyes. “I gotta get out of here. I gotta get out.”
    It could have been worse. Lily had seen worse. At no point had the cell been too crowded to sit down, and she’d been able to lie down part of the time, until she got too sleepy. She hadn’t dared fall asleep, which might be good sense or sheer paranoia.
    She was here because she’d screwed up, yeah. Also because she’d been manipulated by the Lady to carry that damn mantle to Ruben. But she was certain, deep in her gut, that she was also here because this is where someone wanted her.
    She’d been set up. And she’d fallen for it.
    Not that she could prove it. Her thoughts circled round that lack of proof yet again, trying to fit it to her conviction, testing this person and that one as suspects. Drummond? Sjorensen? Mullins? She had nothing to go on.
    Almost nothing. She’d had nothing to do but think since they locked her up, and some of that had been productive. She had a mental list of questions and some ideas about what to check out if she ever got out of here.
    Lily shifted, sick of sitting. But there was nowhere to go. Nothing to do. Lily had been in for nearly a full day. She’d been allowed her one phone call, but was beginning to think she’d called the wrong damn person. None of the others had been here as long as she had. She shouldn’t have been kept here this long, either.
    She shouldn’t have been here at all. And not just in the ohmygod sense.
    Drummond had delegated her custody to his favorite flunky. Doug Mullins had brought her here, not to Headquarters or another federal facility, not to an interrogation room. She hadn’t been questioned at all.
    That was either sheer spite or something more ominous. If they questioned her and she refused to answer without an attorney present, they’d have to process her into a regular cell, not the smelly hell of a holding cell at a county jail. So they wanted her here, but was that because they wanted her to have a really bad night? Or did they have some other reason for keeping her tucked away, in the system but not where anyone would expect to find her?
    Some of the reasons she came up with were probably nutty. She still hadn’t dared sleep.
    Once she’d told Rule she wondered what it would be like to miss him. The mate bond had made that unlikely, she thought. They always played it safe. Sometimes it allowed them to put plenty of space between them, sometimes it didn’t, so they stayed within the same city.
    He was miles and miles away now. Two hundred? Three? She couldn’t tell. Why so far? Where was he, and where was he going? There hadn’t been time to talk about what he’d do—and he hadn’t been shaped for talking.
    But surely the distance meant he and Ruben had gotten away. At least Rule wasn’t locked up in a reeking cell. And Ruben . . . dear God. The Lady wanted him for Rho of Wythe? He was lupi? Only he couldn’t be. You had to be born lupi. You had to have founder’s blood to carry the mantle.
    Start with what is and work back, she told herself. Ruben had gone through First Change. He smelled lupus. He hadn’t before, but he did now. Those added up to a big, fat yes—whatever had happened to him, he was now lupi. Second fact. He carried the Wythe mantle, and not the way Lily had, as a passive passenger. It was active in him. Scott had been unable to stand against him, unable to fight him effectively. Did that mean he did have some of the founder’s bloodline in him? Did she know anything to contradict that?
    She didn’t know anything, period. But it was something to check out . . . if she ever got out of here. If she ever . . . her head jerked. She’d