Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

did. Lily thanked Detective Jones and disconnected.
    “Who was that?” Beth said brightly. “One of your police buddies? Have they decided
     for sure they won’t arrest me?”
    “They’re not going to arrest you.” Lily had told her that several times. “They’ve
     got names for all of the perps but the one who escaped. The guy in surgery is—”
    “You’re right. Why would they arrest me? I didn’t do anything wrong. He deserved it,
     right?”
    Beth didn’t want to hear the man’s name. Having a name made him real, made it a person
     she’d tossed over that railing, not a lump of meat. Lily understood, but dehumanizing
     your opponents was bad for the soul…and it was weird for her to think in terms of
     the soul, but things had changed a lot in the last year. The good news was that her
     sister wasn’t very good at that particular form of denial. Beth had insisted on coming
     here to wait until the guy got out of surgery. You didn’t do that for a lump of meat.
     The bad news was that Beth insisted she was fine, just fine, while her movements grew
     more frantic and her eyes brittle with everything she was determined not to feel.
    After a too-long pause Lily said, “Maybe it doesn’t matter what he deserved.”
    “I guess you think it should bother me,” Beth said. “It doesn’t. I defended myself.
     That’s why I went to Bojuka—so I’d be able to defend myself. And it worked, didn’t
     it? So I’m not upset.”
    “You’re doing a pretty good job of acting upset.”
    “I’m not acting. And I’m not…it’s the adrenaline. I was attacked, and all that adrenalin
     has me kind of wired. But not upset.”
    “The adrenaline’s worn off by now.” Lily stood. “His name is Robert Clampett.”
    “Why do I need to know that? I didn’t need to know that.”
    “I don’t know if Clampett deserved his fate, but I don’t have to know that. You did
     the right thing, Beth. You did what needed to be done.”
    “Aren’t you listening? That’s what I’ve been saying.” Beth stopped moving. Her eyes
     were too big, too bright.
    “Is it what you’re feeling?”
    “I don’t know. I don’t know what I feel. It’s not guilt, but I don’t know what it
     is. I’m glad you’re here.”
    “Me, too.” Lily moved closer and slid an arm around Beth’s waist. “Maybe you can just
     feel whatever-it-is without naming it.”
    “But it has to have a name. Something so large—other people must have felt it, too.
     There must be a word for it.”
    The word was
change.
Lily didn’t think Beth would know what she meant if she suggested it, though. People
     didn’t use
change
as an emotion word, but as a little-
c
verb—change the oil, the channel, your hair color or your address or your diet. Even
     the phrase “change your life” referred to an act of volition, taking charge of something
     and making it better, or at least different. They weren’t talking about the kind of
     volcanic upheaval Beth was caught up in where ash covered the landscape and lava spewed
     up into the air and the ground shook and shook, and nothing looked right or normal.
    Of course, another word for what Beth felt would be
trauma
. Lily didn’t think her sister wanted to hear that one, either. “Are you glad you’re
     alive?”
    Beth nodded firmly. “Of course.”
    “It looks like Murray’s going to be okay. Are you glad about that?”
    “I—he—Lily, he jumped at that man with the gun so he would take the bullet instead
     of me. I’m sure of it. He—he—” Her breath hitched. Her eyes filled. And at last she
     started to cry.
    Once the sobs hit, they hit hard. Lily wrapped her arms around Beth and held on while
     Beth cried out some of the confusion. For a long time she didn’t say anything, not
     until Beth stirred. “Tissue?” She disengaged enough to reach for the box on a nearby
     table.
    “Oh, God, yes,” Beth took the box and pulled one out and blew her nose. “I’m sorry
     for falling apart like that.”
    “Why?”
    “You don’t.”
    “Just because you haven’t been around for any of my collapses doesn’t mean they don’t
     happen. Murray’s going to be okay, Beth. What he did—”
    “He could have died.”
    “He could have, yeah. But that’s the sort of thing lupi do, especially if a woman’s
     in danger. They heal so much faster than we can, so they go flinging themselves in
     front of bullets or knives or demons or whatever as if that were