Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

you?”
    Drummond might have gone spectacularly wrong, but he’d been a good agent before that—savvy,
     smart, and thorough. Of course he knew who Helen was, knew that Lily had killed her.
     God only knew what else he’d dug up about her. “Go away.”
    “Don’t get all huffy. I’ve got a proposition.”
    “Does it involve you leaving me alone?”
    “And where the hell would I go?”
    “How should I know? Obviously you don’t have to hang around me every minute. You were
     gone for over a month.”
    “A month?” That rattled him. “I was…I think I was sleeping. But not the whole time.
     I was at the courthouse with you just now when—”
    She scowled. “I didn’t see you.” Supposedly Drummond couldn’t see or hear the world
     without manifesting, at least to the drifting-white-mist stage.
    “You didn’t look up, and I was…” His mouth kept moving, but all she heard was silence.
     He stopped, scowled,and tried again. Midway through, his mouthed words became speech again. “…show up
     all the way in some places. And talking is goddamn hard, too, so stop interrupting.”
    “You’re not really talking, you know. No movement of air, which is why no one else
     hears you.” It had to be some kind of mindspeech, however much it sounded like regular
     speech to her.
    He snorted. “Like I hadn’t figured that out. Listen, I think I know what I’m supposed
     to do. Why I didn’t just die or go to hell or whatever.” His eyes burned with intensity.
     “I’m supposed to be your partner.”
    It was so ludicrous she had to laugh. “Yeah, that’ll happen.” She collected Scott
     with a glance and started for the road. Drummond tried to grab her arm. His hand passed
     right through her, of course, so after a disgusted grimace he kept pace beside her.
     At least that’s what it looked like—as if he were walking, his feet pushing against
     the ground the way hers did.
    “Look, I get that you don’t like me,” he said. “So what? I’ve worked with a lot of
     assholes. If it gets the job done, you live with it.”
    “You’re a little limited in what you can do right now.”
    “Maybe, but I can do things you can’t. Anywhere within about three hundred feet of
     you, I can check things out. Check things out on either side. For example, there are
     three ghosts here—pretty tattered, not much for conversation, but they’re here. And
     on your side of things, I know where your wolf man is. He’s hunkered down right over
     there.” He stretched out an arm to point at a dip in the ground.
    One finger on that hand glowed faintly from the wedding ring he still wore. It caught
     her attention, that ring. Unconsciously she rubbed her thumb over the ring she wore—an
     engagement ring, not a wedding ring, but the same sort of token. Rule’s ring.
    She looked away. “His name is Mike.”
    “Whatever. The point is, I can help.”
    They’d reached the narrow road that wound among the graves. She stopped. “And you
     think I should trust you.”
    “I dealt straight with you. Once I saw what they were doing, I dealt straight with
     you.”
    True. He’d risked his life to rescue twenty-two homeless people, then given it to
     save a friend. And after he died, he’d found the death-magic amulet so they could
     destroy it.
    But first he’d betrayed the Bureau, nearly killed Lily’s boss, conspired in the murder
     of a U.S. senator, and damn near ended Lily’s career along the way.
    Lily studied him a moment, then took out her phone.
    He frowned. “Who are you calling?”
    “A friend. She hears dead people all the time.” Lily had only chatted with one dead
     guy. This one. As for the big, fat “why” of this screwed-up situation…well, the expert
     she was about to consult used the analogy of a house. Most people didn’t see or hear
     the dead because their houses lacked windows and had only one door—a tightly locked,
     one-way affair. That door didn’t open until the person died. Because Lily had died
     once, her door didn’t lock anymore. It was a tiny bit ajar. Mostly that didn’t matter,
     but she’d been present at Drummond’s death, and somehow that had allowed their energies
     to get tangled up together.
    At least that was the theory. It didn’t explain everything. Lily had been present
     when a lot of people died that day, including the man she’d shot. None of the rest
     of them had taken to tagging along with her.
    She scrolled down to “Etorri” in her