Eileen Wilks - Blood Magic

Mason was the lupus in charge of the terra tradis . Lily hadn’t met him, but she’d heard stories. He sounded like a combination drill instructor and headmaster with a sprinkling of priest.

“Isen?” one of the older men said. “Do you want me to . . . ?” He made a little circular gesture.

“Thank you for the offer. However . . .” Isen gave the abject wolf another look. “I trust Piers to take himself back.”

That perked the wolf up. He gave another, firmer nod.

“What just happened?” someone behind Lily asked.

She turned to see Susan’s husband frowning at the wolf trotting out of the circle. Paul was a tall, gangly man with rimless glasses and shiny black hair that he had cut every week so there was no chance of a single hair falling out of place. He was as serious as a rain cloud and rather shy.

“Hi, Paul. Uh—Piers was sent back to the terra tradis .”

“The what?” He shook his head. “Never mind. Is he dangerous?”

They all are , Lily wanted to say. But that was both too much information and too little. She kept her mouth closed.

Rule answered in the same relaxed way he fielded questions from reporters. “Simply overexcited, but he wasn’t supposed to Change, so he had to be disciplined. We’re firm with our youngsters about the circumstances in which they’re allowed to Change.”

“I wondered because Susan and I were moved away when he . . . when he did that. Changed. We were moved away physically .”

“I apologize for any rudeness.”

“No, no, I wasn’t offended. I simply . . .” Paul was still watching the place in the crowd where the wolf had vanished, an odd expression on his face. “I’ve never seen anything like that.”

“Not many have, outside the clans.” Rule’s tone was perfectly matter-of-fact, yet somehow suggested that Paul was both privileged and too wise to make a fuss about that privilege. “Paul, I was hoping for a chance to chat with you tonight. I won’t keep you from Susan long—I think the regular dancing will start soon—but I’d like your opinion of a stock I’m considering, a medical technology company. You’ll have an insider’s knowledge of their products.”

Paul perked up much as the wolf had, if not quite so obviously. He had an important position in hospital administration—Lily could never remember the exact title, but he made a lot of purchasing decisions and loved to talk about the technology of medicine.

She hid a smile and let Rule do his thing. His flattery worked because it was sincere. He probably was considering that stock—he maintained a diverse portfolio for Nokolai—and he did appreciate hearing Paul’s opinion of the company. And before Paul left Clanhome tonight, he would be convinced Rule Turner was an unusually astute and sensible man. One with an odd ability, maybe, but his occasional furriness would no longer seem important.

The drumming had started up again. After a moment the fiddles joined in. The regular dancing would begin soon. Lily let her attention drift away, looking for Benedict or Cullen. She wanted a word with the former, and she needed to give Cullen the . . . Wait. Was that who Beth had seen earlier?

The man she’d seen moving through the crowd was certainly Asian, but he didn’t look like Freddie. He was shorter, for one thing, and his face was rounder than Freddie’s. She thought he was older, too. She’d gotten only a quick glimpse, but he’d looked older. Plus he’d been wearing a T-shirt and baseball cap. Stuffy Freddie didn’t own a baseball cap. She wasn’t sure he owned a T-shirt.

She touched Rule’s arm. “I need to find Cullen and give him his present.”

He gave her the kind of smile he ought to reserve for when they were alone, brought her hand to his lips, and kissed it. “You’ll save me a dance.”

“Maybe two.” One dance here. One when they were alone. Lily smiled at that thought and left him to his business talk.

Ten minutes later she gave up on finding the Asian man. She couldn’t even find anyone who’d seen him. In this sea of Caucasian faces and bare chests, he ought to stand out, dammit. Any human male ought to stand out here, but the few who’d noticed an Asian man apparently meant Paul, based on what they remembered about height and clothing. No one remembered seeing anyone in a baseball cap.

Of course, that proved nothing. Lily had interviewed too many witnesses to have much confidence in human memory and attention to detail, and she had no reason to think lupi did any better.

But some of them did. Some, she realized, would have been paying attention. She nodded and started looking for a man no one would overlook.

Sure enough, Benedict was easy to find.

The fiddlers had launched into a lively song and people were making room for dancing—square dancing, she thought, from the sound of the music. Or maybe it would be Western swing. That was another thing about lupus gatherings—there was always music and almost always dancing, but you never knew what kind. It depended on who showed up and what they wanted to play.

Lily knew one of the men fiddling for them tonight. In his other life, he was first violinist at the San Diego Symphony—and no one he worked with knew he was lupus. Which was reason enough to track down Benedict. Nokolai might have gone public, but some of its members hadn’t. With the Species Citizenship Bill still bogged down in committee, some couldn’t afford to. It was legal to fire a lupus for being a lupus, and plenty of places would do just that.

Benedict was at the north end of the field near the tubs of drinks, talking to a man she didn’t know. Lily raised her voice slightly. “Benedict.”

He turned and waited, giving her a nod when she reached him. Benedict was in charge of Clanhome’s security. Now that the dance was over, he’d added some of his usual accessories to his cutoffs—a large sword sheathed on his back, a hol stered .357 at his hip, and an earbud. His phone was fastened to his belt opposite the .357.

The combination of low-tech and high-tech weaponry, bare skin, and impressive musculature gave him the look of an animated gaming character, with a whiff of Secret Service from the earbud. She smiled. “No machine gun?”

“No. I’m not expecting trouble.”

He was serious. At least she thought he was—with Benedict it was hard to tell. “That dance was really something. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

He nodded, agreeing. Maybe pleased.

“Does it mean—”

“I won’t discuss my relationship with my brother with you.”

Her eyebrows climbed. Good guess, even if he was wrong about the outcome. Sooner or later, they would discuss it. “I’ll table that for now. I have a security concern.”

He didn’t move. His expression didn’t change. Yet everything about him sharpened. “Yes?”

“I’ve seen an Asian man here I can’t account for. Not Paul—you’ve seen Paul Liu, my brother-in-law? This man is shorter than Paul and possibly older. I only got one glimpse, so I can’t give much of a description, but he was wearing a dark baseball cap and a pale T-shirt with short sleeves.”

“I haven’t seen him or received a report of him, and my people are tracking all the ospi currently at Clanhome.”

Lily blinked. Ospi meant out-clan friend or guest. “My sisters? You’re tracking my sisters?”

He smiled slightly. “I keep track of any out-clan who enter Clanhome.”

Had she been mistaken? Lily drummed her fingers on her thigh. No, she decided. “There aren’t any Asian Nokolai, are there?”

“Two,” Benedict said promptly. “Half-Asian, of course. One has a Korean mother and lives with her in Los Angeles. He’s ten years old. The other is an adult whose mother was Japanese. John Ino is fifty-seven and lives in Seattle, and I doubt he’s here today. But it’s possible.”