Lupi 09 - Mortal Ties

suspicious death. He wants me to see if magic was involved,
     but off the books. Unofficial.” Lily was a touch sensitive, able to feel magic tactilely,
     often able to identify what type it was—and unable to work it or be affected by it.
     If there was any magic on the body or the scene, she’d know. “I’ll be heading to 1221
     Hammer, apartment 717.”
    She texted Rule on her way out of the cemetery, letting him know she’d be late. Mike
     passed her before she reached the gate, moving at the lupi version of an easy lope—about
     as fast as she could sprint, in other words. And, to her annoyance, a filmy white
     shape drifted right along with her. When she reached her car, it solidified. Sort
     of.
    “Sounds like we’ve got a case,” Drummond said.
    “One of us might.” She unlocked the car and climbed in.
    “Dammit, I can help.”
    “Or you can trip me and laugh when I fall down.”
    His features grew even more sour than usual. “I’ll be around when you change your
     mind. Uh…I can’t manifest at Clanhome unless you call me.”
    Manifest
. That was a word she never would have heard from Drummond when he was alive. “You
     can’t do it there?”
    “No. It’s like…” His fingers opened and closed as if he were scratching at the air.
     “That’s closed to me, is all. Unless you call. Wherever you are, if you call me, I
     can manifest.”
    “Huh.” Nokolai Clanhome was where she and Rule were living these days. As were a lot
     of others.
    Rule’s people had always lived under threat, but they’d felt that their children were
     safe. Even during times of fierce persecution, lupi children had lived unmolested
     among humans who might have tossed them onto the fires along with the witches, had
     they known what they were. And the clans might fight among themselves, but kids were
     exempt. In all the years that Leidolf and Nokolai had been enemies, neither clan had
     worried that the other would strike at their children. Even mean, mad old Victor Frey,
     the Leidolf Rho who’d tricked Rule into assuming the mantle, then died before he could
     take it back, had left Toby alone.
    Though the latter, Lily suspected, might be because Victor had known his history.
     Four hundred years ago, Leidolf and Nokolai had acted in rare and complete accord,
     along with Wythe. They’d acted with the explicit backing of every other clan…every
     clan but one. Bánach clan had been feuding with Cynyr. Bánach clan took the eight-year-old
     son of Cynyr’s Rho hostage—took him unharmed, but refused to release the boy until
     Cynyr submitted.
    Bánach clan no longer existed.
    Victor Frey had been vicious and maybe crazy toward the end of his life, but he had
     been Rho. No hatred, however fostered and festered, was as important as the survival
     of his clan. Toby had lived in North Carolina the first eight years of his life, deep
     in Leidolf’s territory. Victor had left Toby alone.
    Robert Friar wouldn’t hesitate to take children. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill them.
     There had been kids at those Humans First rallies. That none had been killed was a
     matter of luck—luck and the furious defense of the lupi the Humans Firsters wanted
     gelded, imprisoned, or dead.
    And so, in addition to bringing in extra fighters, Nokolai had gathered as many of
     its children as it could into Clanhome—children, and sometimes their mothers, and
     as many of their female clan as would come, too. Isen had alsoopened Clanhome to the children of their two subordinate clans in North America—Laban
     and Vochi, both of whom lacked the resources to house and defend all of their children
     at their own Clanhomes, though for opposite reasons.
    “Is that why you haven’t pestered me this past month?” Lily asked. “Because I’ve been
     living at Clanhome, and you can’t manifest there?”
    “No.” He shrugged stiffly. “There’s stuff I don’t understand about this being dead
     business, but that’s not why I was gone. I can manifest some places easier than others,
     but I can do it pretty much anywhere if you call me.”
    She needed to go. Still she paused, looking at the ghost of a man who’d been her enemy
     and was now determined to be her partner. Or whatever. “Tell me something.”
    He looked wary. “If I can.”
    “You killed that woman, or arranged her death somehow. The one with the Fire Gift.
     The one who killed your wife.”
    His face didn’t change, but for a long moment she thought he