Eileen Wilks: Blood Challenge

Feet thudded in the hall. “I’m ready!” Toby called. “Are the burgers done? It took me a little longer ’cause I had to pet Harry. He was lonely.”

Harry was Dirty Harry, Lily’s cat. Though he and Rule had achieved détente—based mainly on Rule’s willingness to give him ham at regular intervals—Harry had never gotten beyond a sort of disdainful tolerance.

He adored Toby.

That made no sense. According to Rule, Toby didn’t smell of wolf yet, but scent wasn’t the only reason Harry didn’t like Rule, probably not even the main reason. Harry was not a friendly beast. He had to be sedated to go to the vet. He attacked the bodyguards whenever he got a chance. He couldn’t stand Lily’s family—well, except for Li Qin, but no one could dislike Li Qin.

Lily had worried about how the cat and the boy would adapt to each other. Toby was a normal nine-year-old boy … which meant he did everything a suspicious and territorial cat hated. He ran. He jumped. He grabbed. He yelled. She’d been sure Toby would be scratched, clawed, disdained.

Yet from the moment Harry had sniffed Toby’s outstretched hand, he’d become a Toby acolyte. He purred when he saw Toby. He slept with Toby. He even condescended to play with the cat toys Toby insisted they buy.

And Toby had decided not to get a dog right now, though he’d talked of little else for ages. It wouldn’t be right, he said. It would make Harry awfully sad.

It would make Harry homicidal, Lily thought. Some puppy out there was going to live a long, unscarred life because Toby had abandoned his dog dreams for now.

Lily took down a couple of plates and put them on the counter next to Rule, then went to the refrigerator. Toby didn’t sully his hamburgers with vegetables, but he was big on condiments.

“The patties are done,” Rule said. “Would you get out the buns, please, Toby?”

“Sure!” Toby bounced over to the pantry—they had an actual pantry, a luxury new to Lily—and pulled out a package of buns. “Did you tell her?” he demanded, looking between Lily and Rule. “She doesn’t look excited.”

“I was waiting for you.” Rule accepted the buns. “It seems we’ll have to allow Toby to stay up late next Wednesday. Late enough to catch The Daily Show .”

She looked from Toby’s grin to Rule’s more restrained smugness. “You’re going to be on Jon Stewart?”

“Isn’t that cooler than catsup?” Toby burst out. “He’s gonna be talking to Jon Stewart!”

“Definitely cool,” she agreed. “But is it … I mean, Stewart’s not vicious the way some of them are, but he goes for the laughs. Is that going to …” Her voice trailed off. “Right. You’ll do fine.”

Rule smiled, amused, as he slid meat patties onto their buns. He didn’t say a word.

He didn’t have to. It would take more than Jon Stewart to make Rule put a foot wrong in front of cameras. It helped that he was so photogenic. Mostly, though, he was just good at it. He’d become the public face for his people almost the instant the Supreme Court made it safe for him to declare himself. His public persona was sort of a werewolf James Bond—mysterious and sophisticated with a whiff of danger. Only a whiff, though. Enough to intrigue, not frighten.

It helped that he really was mysterious and sophisticated. “Doesn’t he film in New York?” She ran through her current cases in her head, trying to figure a way to fly to New York City. The mate bond had its good points, and she was a lot more aware of them these days. But the downside was that it put geographical limits on how far apart they could be. If Rule flew across the country, she had to go, too.

“The show is filming in L.A. next week. Stewart is emceeing the Emmys again, so they decided to move the show there for the week preceding the awards.”

“What about St. Paul? The circle?” Rule was meeting with the Lu Nuncios of the other North American clans. It was a big deal. She was supposed to be there to prove to the others that Nokolai intended no violence. To the clans, a Chosen was sacrosanct. Not the most paranoid among them would suspect Nokolai of putting its Chosen at risk. Plus Lily’s officialness was a deterrent to naughty behavior, period. She was known to take the law seriously.

“That’s Monday.”

“I know.” She’d had to clear her schedule to go with him. The others wanted it held in neutral territory, which had turned out to be St. Paul. “But if it doesn’t go well—if you bleed or something—”

“We’re going to talk, not cry Challenge at each other. Even if it goes badly, I’ll be able to fly to L.A. by Wednesday. The question is, will you? We can fly up and back the same night, if necessary.”

He could probably go to L.A. on his own. The mate bond had been giving them plenty of slack lately, but they couldn’t take the chance because the physical limit it imposed changed. Without warning. Without reason, from what Lily could see. That bugged her a lot more than it did Rule.

At least it had never contracted as much as it had right after it hit and they made love the first time. They’d been all but glued to each others’ sides then. “Okay,” she said at last. “I can make it work. None of my cases are hot and all the task force does is talk, so a couple hours on a plane shouldn’t be a problem. This is about Friar, isn’t it? Him and Humans First.”

Toby made a face. “He’s a turd.”

“Are you allowed to say that?’ Lily asked, then glanced at her watch. “Damn. I’ve got to go shower.”

“Tell her the rest, Dad,” Toby said. “Quick, so we aren’t late.”

The rest? Lily looked at Rule, eyebrows raised. “Letterman?”

“He does film in New York, so I had to turn him down.”

He’d been asked, though. Sometimes it was deeply weird, living with someone who got asked onto Letterman. It wouldn’t have been his first time, either. “Who, then?”

His bland smile made her instantly suspicious. “You’ll have to agree to this one, since the invitation includes you. It’s for two weeks from today, and we’d have to go to Chicago.”

Toby couldn’t stand it anymore. “ Oprah ! You get to be on Oprah with Dad! She particularly asked for you.”

She stared at Rule in horror. “You haven’t accepted yet, though. You can turn them down.”

“Lily!” Toby was shocked.

“I don’t want to be on Oprah . She makes people say stuff. Personal stuff that no one … I don’t want to say stuff.”

“And you don’t have to,” Rule said soothingly. “Not much, anyway. You can talk mostly to me and to Oprah’s other guest.”

She could feel that other shoe about to hit the floor. “Who will be—?”

“Robert Friar.”

Oh, shit. “You’ve trapped me. If he’s going to be there, I can’t … You made it so I can’t say no.”

“Actually, I believe the credit for that goes to Oprah herself, or to those who handle bookings for her show. I had nothing to do with it.”

“I can’t guarantee anything. If something big comes up, or if the task force stops talking and actually does something—”

“Oprah will understand, I’m sure, if you have an urgent investigation and can’t travel. But it does have to be urgent.”

Oh, yeah. She was trapped.

ROBERTFriar, founder of Humans First, was going to be on Oprah .

Lily adjusted the shower temperature to cool and stepped in, brooding on that. It wasn’t as if Rule needed her to pin Friar’s ears back. He could do that just fine. He knew how to handle himself on TV. She … well, she could handle a press conference, but Oprah was a whole ’nother kettle of fish. You were supposed to confide in Oprah. Get intimate. Reveal stuff.