Eileen Wilks - Mortal Sins

Before his ears stopped ringing, Rule had snatched Toby off the bed with its old-fashioned quilt, now spattered with blood and brains. He held his sleeping son close and rocked him, rocked him.

Lily came to him and curled her hand around his arm, but her eyes were on the bed. She sighed. “You’re right, Brown,” she said to the man climbing in the window. “You’re a goddamned good shot.”

DEACONradioed the ambulance. Rule carried Toby outside to wait for it away from blood and death. Lily stayed in the cabin to do her job—first by summoning the ERT to yet another crime scene.

She felt weak. Shaky. Slightly sick to her stomach. Adrenaline aftermath, she told herself. Keep moving and it will go away. She looked at Deacon. “Would you call the hospital, have someone talk to Louise, let her know Toby’s okay? I don’t have that number in my phone.”

“Sure.”

Cullen was standing in the middle of the room, turning in a slow circle, his gaze slowly lowering to the floor.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Her grimoire. I need it to figure out how to stop the wraith. I need to find the spell she used.”

The wraith. Unbelievably, she’d almost forgotten about it. She put a hand to her temple, rubbing it and wishing she could sit down for a minute. The nausea kept trying to rise. “Charley. His name is Charley.”

“Right.” He stopped. “Root cellar! Of course. But where’s the entrance?” He frowned at the floor.

Was he not making any sense, or was it just her?

Brown stumped up to her. “Why the hell aren’t you out there with that boy and your man?”

“I—”

“You think I can’t keep an eye on a crime scene until the techs get here?” He shook his head, disgusted as ever. “Go out there. Hug your man. Hug that boy you saved. It’ll make some of this”—he nodded at the body on the bed—“go away. Not all of it, but enough.”

Gratitude caught her by the throat and squeezed. For one terrible second she thought she might cry—which would have horrified Brown even more than her. “Thanks,” she managed.

“You’ll go with him to the hospital,” he told her. “Don’t give me any shit about that.”

She found she could smile. Not very big, but that’s what it was. “I will,” she said, and headed for the door.

Deacon spoke as she was leaving, but not to her. “There’s a cellar entrance outside, if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s by the back door if you want to . . .”

He didn’t bother to finish; Cullen was already dashing for the back door.

LILYstepped into sunshine, blinking at the brightness.

Rule sat at a picnic table several paces away, cradling Toby, whose legs dangled to the ground, his head bent as he watched his son breathe.

“His color’s good,” Lily said as she approached.

Rule looked up. He had a smile for her. “So are his breathing and his heartbeat. He’s pretty deeply sedated, though. Hasn’t stirred at all. I can’t help wondering if there’s a magical component to that tea she gave him.”

“Bet I can answer that.” She came close, bent, and put her hand on Toby’s cheek. “No magic,” she said softly, knowing Rule was remembering another time when his son had slept, unable to wake. That had been due to demon magic.

He sighed hugely in relief. “ Nadia . . . ” He broke off, unhappiness crossing his face.

She wasn’t his nadia anymore. Nadia meant knot, bond, tie . . . “Do you violate some code if you call me that when we aren’t mate-bonded?”

“Perhaps not. Are you all right?”

She took a moment, checking her insides. “I will be. Brown sent me out here.” She grimaced. “He pulled the trigger, but I’m the one with the shakes.”

“You gave the order. I understand the need, and the price, for such orders. When it troubles you—and it will, at times—ask yourself if Mandy Ann would have been better off alive. She would have been ruled insane, surely. What if doctors had somehow been able to return her to reality, and she knew she’d electrocuted her daughter and condemned her son to an endless, living death?”

“Yeah.” Lily gusted out a breath. “Yeah.” She looked past him at the road, where an ambulance was bumping its way along the ruts. “Good. Here they come.”

They were loading Toby into the ambulance when Cullen came hurrying around the corner of the house, carrying a plain spiral notebook in one hand and a Mason jar in the other. “I found it.”

“That’s a grimoire?” Lily shook her head. “Never mind. What’s in the jar?”

“Blood.”

“Cullen, we can’t take evidence away without—”

“Charley’s blood,” he said grimly. “And to hell with the evidence chain. We’re going to need it.”

THEYwould let only one person ride in the ambulance with Toby, so Lily walked back to the car with Cullen. By the time they reached it, she was still tired, but the shakes and nausea were gone.

Cullen buckled up and spoke not a word for the first ten minutes of the drive into Halo, studying Mandy Ann’s spiral grimoire. The word he used to break the silence was “Shit.”

“You don’t know how to stop it?”

“I do, but I don’t like it. You’re not going to like it. And Rule is going to hate it.”

Already he was right about her reaction, and he hadn’t told her anything. “And the answer is—?”

“The only one who can kill the wraith is Charley.”

“Charley is the wraith.”

“Bingo.”

ONEthing about going to the ER in an ambulance—they saw you right away. Which was just how Rule wanted it. By the time Lily and Cullen arrived, the doctor had already checked out Toby and left to deal with patients “who actually need me. This boy of yours will wake up with a bit of a headache, if that.”

“Toby’s okay,” he told them. “They want to keep him here for a couple hours for observation, but he’s fine. The doctor managed to rouse him briefly, so this isn’t like the other time.” He smiled ruefully at Lily. “I know you already checked, and I believed you, but . . . it was good to see his eyes open for a moment.”

Lily’s face softened. She walked to the bed where Toby lay, covered by one of those paltry blankets the ER used, and touched his cheek. “He looks fine. He looks wonderful. Have you had time to see Louise?”

“She came down here after we arrived. Someone let her know we were here. She says Alicia has a concussion and a fractured shoulder blade. They think she’ll be okay, though they’re keeping her overnight for observation. But she’s woken, too. She was . . . When she first woke, she was frantic about Toby.”

He stopped, remembering how sure he’d been that Alicia didn’t really care about her son. Yet she’d fought for him.

“Does she remember the attack?” Lily asked.

“Most of it. She’d stopped for gas. It was one of those automated places, with no attendants. A friendly woman dressed like an aging hippie was the only other customer. She asked Alicia for help. She was having car trouble. She thought it was the battery.”

“Mandy Ann.”

“Yes. Alicia remembers peering into the rear-mounted engine of the woman’s old VW bug when something struck her hard on her shoulders. She fell to the pavement—her shoulder blade was broken by the blow, though she didn’t know it—and saw that harmless old hippie woman with a baseball bat in her hands. The woman grabbed Toby’s arm and yanked him toward her car, and Alicia got up and fought for her son.”

Rule swallowed. He’d seen the scratches on Mandy Ann’s face, hadn’t he? “She doesn’t remember being hit a second time, but Mandy Ann must have swung that bat again, this time giving her a concussion.”