Lupi 08 - Death Magic

death for some, insanity for others. Probably human deaths, too, because lupi did not deal well with being clanless.
    Lily’s Gift let her absorb magic the way dragons do. She’d breathed in the mantle as Brian died—and the lupi’s Lady had somehow made it so she didn’t just absorb the power. Instead the mantle resided inside her, intact and unreachable, a furry tickle that never went away.
    Most of the time it felt like she needed to scratch her colon. Or burp.
    She was caretaker of the mantle, not Rho. Wythe needed a Rho, but all they had right now were the clan elders. Normally they were an informal council of advisors to the Rho, men and the occasional woman who held positions of trust—as chief tender, for example, or head of security, or manager of an important business owned by the clan.
    Walt McDonald was the most senior Wythe elder. He’d been an attorney for forty years before retiring to run Wythe’s dairy farm, which he’d done for twelve years now. He was one hundred and seven years old, for God’s sake, yet he consulted Lily over every little decision. As if she knew what to do with a twenty-year-old lupus who couldn’t control the Change reliably! Or water rights. Or the dozen other things he’d called her about.
    Not for much longer. Lily figured that if the Lady had stuffed a mantle into her, she could get it out again and put it where it belonged. They just had to find the right Wythe lupus to take it. The whole clan would be waiting for her Tuesday, so surely one of them would . . .
    Rule turned her hand palm up, cradling it still in his left hand. With his right he gently opened her fingers.
    She looked at him. It was darker along this stretch of road in spite of the headlights flashing up and past, up and past, but she saw the way his mouth turned up. The way his eyes locked on to hers.
    Rule had hidden something from her. Something important. She hated that, but he hadn’t hidden himself. Not on purpose. Shouldn’t she have known, though? Shouldn’t she have realized a secret lay between them? Had she been too wrapped up in everything else to see? In her wounded arm, her job, Friar’s disappearance, the All-Clan that was finally scheduled, the muscle that might or might not regrow, the furry tickle in her gut and the complications it posed, their upcoming wedding, the . . .
    Okay, yes, she should have noticed. But maybe she could give herself a pass this time.
    With his thumb, Rule drew a circle lightly, lightly in the palm of her hand.
    She knew his body very well. She knew the shapes of his mind . . . sometimes. Other times those shapes mystified her. It was like wandering through a fog, with shapes now emerging, now retreating into mist. How well could she know the mind of one who was only a part-time human, after all?
    His thumb circled the pad at the base of her index finger. Every nerve ending in her hand woke up. Her breath did, too.
    Slowly she smiled. Some shapes were easy to recognize.
    For the next three-and-a-half miles Rule drew flesh-whispers in her palm. They were both silent, both still, except for the feathery brush of his thumb, over and over.
    Somewhere Lily had read that there were around twenty-five hundred nerve receptors per square centimeter in the palm. Every one of them was bleeding sensation into the rest of her body by the time the Mercedes stopped in front of the Georgetown row house.
    Rule thanked Scott gravely, as he always did. He and Lily got out on the sidewalk side, not touching now. Overhead, the sky was a dark, blank shield, its vastness muddied by D.C.’s reflected light. Their street contributed to the overall light pollution, but light made shadows, didn’t it? Hard shadows, topped by the smoggy shield civilization raised between it and infinity. They were both watchful as they slipped between parked cars.
    Lily unlocked the door. Even such minor details as this were scripted now. Rule’s senses and reaction time were better than hers, so he kept watch while she opened the door and stepped into softer light. He closed the door behind them, muffling the city sounds of traffic and television, the distant wail of a siren, and someone’s dog barking two streets away.
    Rule moved to the foot of the stairs. He stood motionless, head up and nostrils flared. She waited until a subtle shift in his stance said he’d found no strange scents. Safety was a slippery state, but for now, they were as safe as they could be.
    She didn’t want to