Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

do, thanks to the Old One she served. That’s how she’d met her protégé, Patrick
     Harlowe…who’d also died badly, but not at Lily’s hands. Cullen Seabourne had done
     the honors there.
    But Lily had killed again since then. Helen was her first, but killing and war went
     together, didn’t they? Even if most of the country didn’t know they were at war, the
     lupi did. Lily did. And so did her boss, head of the FBI’s Unit Twelve…head, too,
     of the far less official Shadow Unit.
    In the run-up to the war, Lily had killed demons, helped a wraith reach true death,
     and ushered a supposed immortal through that small, dark door. This last September
     she’d tried and failed to kill a sidhe lord. And in October, just before the first
     open battle of the war, she’d shot a man. Double-tapped him.
    That man had just shot a fellow FBI agent—a lying, treacherous bastard of an agent,
     but at that point he’d been on Lily’s side. There had been other lives on the line:
     four lupi, another FBI agent, and the twenty-two people the bad guys intended to slaughter.
     Lily had sited on the shooter’s head—his body had been blocked by the van he’d driven—and
     squeezed off two quick shots. She’d killed him cold, not hot, killed him to stop him
     from killing others.
    That was training. Most cops never had to use their weapons, but when you took up
     the badge you knew you might be called on to take a life. Lily had never doubted she
     could. Not since she was nine, anyway. The man who’d raped and killed her friend while
     she watched, tied up and waiting for him to do the same to her, had been arrested
     and tried and convicted. He’d gone to prison for life, which was all the vengeance
     she was supposed to want.
    But for months afterward, she’d dreamed of murder.
    Lily had always known she entered the police force to stop the monsters. She was beginning
     to understand the other reason she’d needed that bureaucratic harness.
    “Goddamn morbid sort of thing to do, isn’t it?” said a gravelly voice. “Hanging out
     at the grave of someone you killed.”
    Lily jolted, then twisted to scowl at the intruder. “Oh, hell. I thought you were
     gone.”
    “Guess you were wrong.” The man standing disrespectfully atop a nearby grave wore
     a dark suit with a wrinkled white shirt and a plain tie. He was on the skinny side
     of lean, with his dark, thinning hair combed straight back from a broad forehead,
     and he was pale. Pale as in white. Also slightly see-through.
    Al Drummond. Her very own personal haunt.

TWO

    W HAT had she ever done to deserve this? Lily ran both hands through her hair. “Go away.”
    “Ah…Lily?” Scott said.
    Scott, of course, hadn’t seen or heard anything, except for her talking to empty air.
     “It’s Drummond, dropping in again for a visit.” Al Drummond, former FBI Special Agent…the
     lying, treacherous bastard who’d been shot by the man Lily had killed last month.
     Scott knew about him.
    The dead might not scare her, but they could be damned annoying. “If you’re here to
     give me more of your pearls of wisdom—”
    “No. At least…” He paused uncertainly. “I don’t think so.”
    Drummond had been many things in life.
Uncertain
wasn’t one of them. The novelty of it interrupted her more thoroughly than his words,
     stirring an unwanted curiosity. “What, then?”
    “I don’t know.” He crossed his arms, scowling. “You think I picked you to fix on?
     You think this is my idea of a great way to spend eternity—popping in to watch you
     brushyour goddamn teeth? What the hell are you doing here, anyway?”
    Lily stood. Whatever she’d hoped for today, it wasn’t happening now. Not with Drummond
     hanging around. “In what way can that be considered any of your business?”
    “Just curious. It makes things easier for me, but somehow I don’t think that’s why
     you came.”
    “What do you mean, it makes it easier for you?”
    “Easier for me to show up. Places like this, the veil is thin.”
    Amusement jabbed at her, half funny and half painful. “I wish Mullins could hear you
     talking about ‘the veil’ like some TV psychic.”
    He snorted. “That would chap his ass, wouldn’t it? You like to hang out at the graves
     of people you’ve killed?”
    “How do you know whose grave this is?”
    “I can read.”
    “And you know who Helen was.”
    “Did you think I didn’t do any digging before I set out to get