Eileen Wilks: Blood Challenge

Toby nodded. “Dad can make you one to take with you. Hey, Dad!” Excitement overtook him. “Did you tell her about—”

“Not yet,” Rule said, “and it’s my surprise, so go get dressed before you ruin it.”

Toby giggled, shot Lily a mischievous look, and raced off.

Lily shook her head in wonder. “He’s sure riding a high of some sort this morning. Rule, about this surprise—”

At the same time he said, “About those letters—”

They looked at each other. Smiled. “Okay,” she said, “the letters came up first, so we’ll hit that, but fast. I do need to shower.”

“TALKwhile I cook,” Rule said, and headed for the kitchen.

That was next to the entry. It was small compared to her parents’ kitchen, but huge compared to what she’d had in her old apartment. Of course, until recently the only use she had for a kitchen was as a place to park a coffeemaker and a refrigerator, but she was learning to cook. Slowly. “I’m not hungry. I ate before I ran.”

“A yogurt smoothie is not a meal.”

“Not for you, maybe. I had a banana, too.”

He took out the hamburger meat. “I’ll cook it. You don’t have to eat it. How many threats have you received?”

“None I consider serious.”

“That’s not an answer.” He began shaping a patty.

Lily bent to pull out the big grill pan and gave in. “Seven altogether. Six were addressed to the local FBI office. One was sent to Quantico. Two of those nuts signed their names,” she added dryly. “They’ve been checked out and given a stern warning. The rest contain either explicit or implicit threats.”

“You’ll tell me exactly what it is they do threaten.”

She shrugged. “One was very traditional: ‘Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.’ They got a couple good partials and a full thumbprint from that one, but no match so far. The rest … Rule, they’re ugly, but there’s no reason to think the writers will go from words to actions. The vast majority of the time, the letter-writer is satisfied with venting and doesn’t escalate.”

“Someone did. He vandalized your car.”

“Which means we ought to have his picture, right?” She set the pan on the burner. “Medium heat?”

“A little higher. I want to see those letters.”

“There’s no point in it. You’d just—”

“Lily.” He slapped patties onto the griddle—one, two, three, four, five. At least two were for him, maybe three. She didn’t think Toby could eat two of the thick patties. “I am not going to panic. Do you really think I haven’t received my share of threatening letters?”

She felt foolish. Of course he had. “You think you have a handle on when it’s a real threat, when it’s a caution light, and when you can set it aside.”

“They’re all at least a caution light.”

“Okay. And how many letters have you received since Friar started appearing on all those talk shows?”

He stilled. Then his mouth twitched. “Ah … I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

She kept her mouth firm. “How many, Rule?”

“Four. But they’re—”

“Not anything I need to worry about? Nothing to be taken too seriously?”

He ran a hand through his hair. “Dammit, Lily, no matter how many people enjoy mouthing off, the number who will actually take on a big, bad werewolf is vanishingly small. You’re—”

“A big, bad federal agent,” she finished, before he could say “small” or “a woman” or anything else that would get him in trouble. “Believe it or not, very few people want to take us on, either. We’re not as scary as you, but we’ve got that whole power-of-the-law thing going.”

For a long moment he just looked at her. She could see thoughts moving behind his dark eyes, but had no sense of where he was headed with them. So it should have been no surprise that he surprised her. “Then it wasn’t the threats you’ve received that gave you nightmares last night?”

She considered several replies, but settled on “No.”

He crossed to her and brushed her hair back, his face softening. He settled his hands on her shoulders. “Did you think I wouldn’t notice that you woke smelling of fear?”

“Sometimes your ability to smell what’s going on with me is a comfort. Sometimes it’s a pain in the ass.”

That made him smile, but briefly. “You had a session with Sam yesterday.”

She didn’t say anything. They’d already talked about this. Okay, not much—she wasn’t a talk-it-out person—but they’d talked.

Last month, Lily had learned her Gift came with bonus abilities. The first one made her uneasy. It would be too easy to abuse, even with the best motives. No one should be able to suck out another person’s magic … except in extraordinarily rare situations. Like when the other person was a millennia-old out-realm being who was trying to kill you so she could drive millions of people into madness and feed on their fear.

Lily was okay with what she’d done then, but that situation wasn’t likely to arise a second time. She figured she could retire that particular trick. The other one was freaky in its own way, but nowhere near as disturbing.

Mindspeech was a dragon thing, but Sam said she had the potential to learn it. She’d actually done it once with Rule, but that had been an accident she hadn’t been able to repeat. But she’d been offered the chance to learn. After thinking it over, she’d accepted.

Her teacher was Sam, also known as Sun Mzao, the black dragon, who was sort of her grandfather-in-magic, if not DNA. A couple times a week she went to his lair and sat with him. It was hard to describe what happened. On a thinking level, not much did. She’d sit. After awhile he’d light the wick of a candle—easy for a dragon to do, no matches needed—and tell her, Watch . The first time he lit the candle, he had given her one additional instruction: Find me here .

So far, all she’d found were the nightmares.

Rule was every bit as good at saying nothing as she was. He waited, his thumbs making soothing circles along her collarbone.

“It was Helen again,” she admitted. “I don’t have to be a psych major to see why she stars in the nightmare. I’m trying to learn mindspeech, which Sam insists is not telepathy, but the two are next-door neighbors. I killed the only telepath I’ve ever met.”

“You killed a crazy woman who was trying to kill you and open a hellgate.”

“True, but somehow not pertinent.” She shook her head, disliking her own vagueness but unable to dispel it.

His thumbs circled back, pressing more firmly, finding the tension at her nape and easing it. “Are you committed to learning mindspeech? At first you weren’t sure it was worth it. If it opens you to such fears—”

She snorted. “This from the man who moved into a high-rise on purpose so he’d be forced to ride in the elevator every day.”

He smiled faintly. “Damn those torpedoes, hmm?”

“Pretty much. I get a week off, though. Sam will be gone for at least that long for one of their sing-alongs. Um … I’m not to speak of it, except to you, and you’re not to tell anyone.” Dragons were mostly solitary, but at unpredictable intervals they gathered to sing together—though Lily thought she and Rule were the only two in their realm who knew this. Except for Grandmother, of course. “That reminds me. While Sam’s gone, Grandmother and Li Qin are heading for Disneyland.”

He grinned. “That I’d like to see.”

“She loves Disneyland. She used to take me and my sisters every year. Are the burgers burning?”

“Shit.” He let her go and spun to the stove.