Lupi 08 - Death Magic

frowned. “He said it was about the war, and that’s just weird. He’s not lupi.”
    “He’s our ally.”
    “Yes, but first and foremost, he’s FBI. Government. The U.S. government isn’t at war. For the most part, it doesn’t even know the Great Bitch exists.”
    War did not mean the same thing to humans as it did to lupi. Rule knew this. Most beings who knew anything about the Great War—and not many did—believed it had ended roughly three thousand years ago. Not lupi. To them, war ended only with the death or complete subjugation of the enemy, and their Lady’s enemy was an Old One, as incapable of dying as she was of submission. Three thousand years might be a very long lull in the action, but lupi had been at war with her for all that time.
    Recently the lull had ended.
    “I think I understand what you mean,” Rule said as they crossed the entry hall. The study door was almost directly opposite the staircase. It stood open. “For humans or lupi, war is a joint effort. An individual can only consider himself at war in a metaphorical sense, if his society isn’t also at war. Perhaps Ruben spoke metaphorically.”
    “I don’t think so,” she said dryly. “Maybe he wanted me to know it was about her without saying so directly. Deborah was right there.”
    “You think he hasn’t told his wife about our enemy?”
    “I don’t know what he’s told her. He carries a lot of secrets in his head. Some of them he isn’t free to talk about. Some he may not want to talk about.”
    Rule considered that as they went into a room that, by day, would be sun-flooded from the tall windows on the north wall. Tonight the drapes were closed and the only light came from a floor lamp. It was an inviting room—dark cherry desk and file cabinets, chocolate drapes, cinnamon upholstery on the two armchairs, walls the color of an old chamois. The warm colors were likely Deborah’s doing, since Ruben didn’t take an interest in such things. But those chamois-colored walls held objects Ruben did take an interest in: books, framed photos, a tribal mask, what looked like a broken walking stick, and a magnificent abstract painting.
    Lily, however, was looking at the floor, not the walls. “Is that for decoration, do you think?”
    The floor here was the same warm hickory as on the rest of the ground floor, with one addition: a thin silvery inlay delineated a circle that included most of the room. “You can ask Ruben. I wonder if the need to keep secrets from Deborah is why . . .”
    “Why what?”
    “Ruben and Deborah seem to possess the kind of rapport that comes from intimacy. She’s important to him, yet he seldom speaks of her. It seemed odd to me, but perhaps that’s how he protects those secrets he holds. He doesn’t speak often of his work to his wife. He doesn’t speak often of his wife when he’s working.”
    “A lot of cops do that. They want to keep the ugly shit they see from touching their families, so they don’t talk about the job at home.”
    “You don’t do that.”
    She snorted. “As if I’d ever had a chance to, with you.”
    That pleased him, so he moved close and kissed her.
    A voice spoke from the doorway. “What a lovely reason to slip away from the party.”
    Lily jolted. Rule let go of her without looking away from her annoyed face. “Hello, Fagin.”
    “You heard him, didn’t you?” Lily looked past him at the man who’d joined them. “You left an hour ago. I saw you leave.”
    The older man beamed at them. “It does my heart good to think I tricked such a clever and watchful woman.”
    “You didn’t want anyone to know you’d stayed here.”
    “No more than you did, my dear.” He lumbered into the room carrying a paper plate with goodies from the dessert bar. “If you have any electronics on you—phone or whatever—you need to put them on that table in the hall.”
    “Why?”
    Fagin waggled his eyebrows at her. “Because you won’t learn why you’re here if you don’t.”
    Rule retrieved his phone and held out his hand for Lily’s phone. He could see the questions jostling around in her by the way her lips thinned with the effort of holding them back.
    Funny. With the time rapidly shifting from “soon” to “now,” he didn’t feel so philosophical. His stomach was tight with worry. No, call it by its true name: fear. Taking their phones into the hall gave him a moment to get his face and body back under control.
    Ruben arrived in the hall. Their eyes