Lupi 08 - Death Magic

her who was. Lily kept moving. “I smell sausage.”
    “There should be some left. I threatened Cullen’s life if he ate all of it.”
    The only lupus sorcerer in the history of the planet sat at their kitchen table, finishing up a plate of French toast. He was a bit shorter than Rule, his hair a bit lighter brown—more spice than mink—and his face stopped people in their tracks. The spectacular face went well with a supernally graceful body.
    This morning that face was unshaven, the expression surly, and the body dressed in disreputable jeans. He wore a small diamond in one ear, a larger one on a chain around his neck, and his T-shirt bore a cartoon of what seemed to be a Sasquatch in a ninja costume.
    Sometimes Lily did not get Cullen’s sense of humor. “A ninja Sasquatch?”
    “Cool, isn’t it?”
    “Sit,” Rule said. “I’ll fix you some French toast.”
    Lily wasn’t going to argue with French toast. She sat. “What time did you get in?” she asked Cullen.
    “Plane landed at one. Traffic sucked. Got here about two. Napped for a couple hours.” He dragged the last bite of battered bread through a puddle of maple syrup. “You going to eat your sausage?”
    “Yes. How—”
    “Don’t know yet, but you’ve got a minimum of five perps.”
    “So I assumed. What I was about to ask is, how are Cynna and the baby?”
    Surly vanished, eclipsed by what Lily could only call a glow. Cullen’s phone was on the table. He shoved it at her, tapped the screen a couple times, and said, “Beautiful. See? They’re both ungodly beautiful. She’s smiling in some of these pics. I don’t care what they say—that’s a real smile.”
    “She” meant Ryder, Lily assumed, the six-pound, seven-ounce explosion that had rocked the clans’ world. Cullen and Cynna had a daughter. And she was lupus.
    That was impossible. There had never been a female lupus and there never would be. Lupi had daughters sometimes, sure, but only their sons could Change. Only their sons were lupi. Yet according to Cullen, who could see the magical energy around his daughter, little Ryder would someday turn wolf. According to the Rhejes, Cullen was right.
    A lot of lupi were dealing with this knockout punch to their worldview in the time-honored way: selective denial. Yes, the Lady said that the arrival of a female lupus meant that war had resumed with their ancient enemy. War was fine. They understood war. They did not understand the concept of a female lupus, so they refused to talk about it.
    Lily had started scrolling through a few hundred lovely if incredibly repetitious photos of the mother and baby stored on Cullen’s phone when Rule set a plate of French toast in front of her. As she ate, Cullen talked about cloth diapers, tiny fingernails, Cynna’s breasts—she was breast-feeding, as about a hundred of the photos testified—infant massage, and gas.
    It was surprisingly comforting. Not interesting, no. She couldn’t say she found a lecture on various ways to burp a baby interesting. But comforting. By the time Rule joined them with his own plate, Lily had almost finished thumbing through the photos and Cullen was discussing the potential problems of seeing a daughter through First Change.
    “. . . one of the biggies, of course, being contraceptives.” He brooded on that a moment. “We have to assume the pill won’t work. As soon as she goes through the Change, her body will reject any drugs in her system. So we’ll have to rely on mechanical methods, but fourteen- and fifteen-year-olds aren’t noted for their skill at planning ahead. Telling the boys I’ll kill them if they forget to use a condom won’t work.”
    Lily didn’t quite choke on the food in her mouth, but it was a near thing. She swallowed. “You don’t think abstinence is a possibility?”
    Cullen snorted. “Not with lupi boys—and not, I’m guessing, with a lupus girl. Normally we control availability. New wolves simply aren’t around potential sex partners at terra tradis . But the only way to control availability with Ryder would be to separate her from the other new wolves. I won’t do that to her.”
    Puberty arrived a bit later for most lupi than for humans, typically around age fourteen. When it did, it triggered First Change. At that point the boy—or, as the lupi usually said, the new wolf—was sequestered with other adolescents at the terra tradis , a private area where new wolves could be closely supervised and trained. It took a