Eileen Wilks - Mortal Sins

The other man—the one Charley had thought of as a warmth, something to be used or killed—made a fire. Right in the middle of the green grass that smelled so sweet, he tossed a fire down as easily as someone else might sprinkle fertilizer. It was small, but that was all right. It was also green, a lighter, brighter green than the grass. And when Charley put his hand into it, it scampered up his arm. It rolled all over him, tickling.

It was while the fire played with him that he began to let go. It was easy, really. Just as the wraith had instinctively known how to eat, Charley knew how to let go of what he’d taken. It was only energy now.

When he was finished, though, there was still something left. Something very powerful, and . . . shaped. Not just energy. Something incredibly lovely.

“Ready to go?” someone asked.

He looked up as the last of the green fire flickered on his hands and died. A black dude with a paper white face and a top hat stood a few feet away, grinning. He looked odd, but right. Somehow he looked right.

“Who are you?”

The black dude doffed his hat with a little bow. “Think of me as the taxi driver. I’m here to pick you up.”

“But what do I do with this?” He indicated in a way he couldn’t describe the shaped power that still rested inside him. “Everything else is gone, but this didn’t leave.”

“It’s not going anywhere. You are. Just leave it where you found it.” The man held out his hand.

Charley took it.

Lily felt him leave. And she felt what he’d left behind—right where he found it. “Rule,” she said, flooded with wonder. “Rule, the mate bond is—”

But she couldn’t say anything more, because her lover, her mate, her Rule was holding her too tightly for words, and laughing. Laughing as he covered her mouth with his.

THEday after Charley died for the second and final time, Rule sat in the porch swing with his son. No reporters today, thank God. The grass was wet from a shower last night and the sky was a solid sheet of gray, promising more rain to come. This time, the rain had managed to dial down the thermometer; it was twenty degrees cooler than it had been this time yesterday.

Nettie and Cynna had arrived at Charlotte’s airport late last night. Cullen had picked them up and brought them to Halo, going straight to the hospital, where a grouchy Lily was being kept while experts argued about whether she should be released. Her MRI scan didn’t show any problems—but everyone who’d been possessed by the wraith had ended up suffering brain damage.

Ruben had given Nettie a security clearance that allowed her full access to all test results from both Meacham and Hodge. She’d studied those as well as Lily’s test results. She’d also examined Lily directly, using whatever means healers used to sense the body. In the end, she’d arrived at a theory that the other experts agreed with: possession triggered changes in the brain’s chemistry—changes that initially were minor, but which caused a cascade effect if left unchecked, resulting in irreversible damage.

But Lily hadn’t reached that point. There were signs of what Nettie called instabilities, but the mate bond seemed to have put a stop to the chemical cascade. Nettie had still ordered Lily to bed—an edict Lily tried to appeal, but no one, not even Rule’s father, won that sort of argument with Nettie. Lily was upstairs in bed now, probably asleep.

Nettie’s healing Gift couldn’t work on Lily directly. A sensitive could not be affected by magic, even if she wanted to be. Yet Nettie could put Lily in sleep, a trancelike state that heightened her body’s innate healing. Nettie said this was because, as a shaman, she could call on spiritual aid, and Lily’s Gift wasn’t proof against the spiritual.

The wraith had certainly proven that.

The whole business annoyed Lily no end—for the same reason, Rule suspected, that she was unsettled by the mate bond, the same reason she was baffled by religion. None of them were quantifiable. None offered clear, consistent answers to her questions.

A pale green sedan cruised past. On the sidewalk, a middle-aged woman and her large, happy Labrador retriever trotted past, ignoring the imminent rain. The woman smiled and nodded. The Lab looked astonished.

Caught a whiff of Rule’s scent, probably. “What about a Lab?” he said. “They’re athletic dogs and are happy with low status as long as they’re fed and loved.” Since every lupus the dog met would outrank him or her, this was a factor. A few breeds were too innately dominant to thrive at Clanhome.

“Maybe.” Toby watched the dog, which stopped twice to look over his shoulder at them. He giggled. “Can’t believe his nose, can he?”

Alicia was still hospitalized. She’d done something to her shoulder—Rule was unclear on the specifics—that made her doctor decide to keep her an extra day. Tomorrow she and James would drive up to D.C. Rule had offered to move to a hotel with Lily so Alicia could recuperate at her mother’s home, but Alicia hadn’t wanted to.

Perhaps that was for the best. Toby had become upset at the idea of his father staying elsewhere. Rule should stay here, “to protect Grammy.”

Clearly Grammy wasn’t the only one Toby felt needed protection. He didn’t feel safe anymore in the house where he’d grown up, not unless his father was present. It ached Rule’s heart.

Not that Toby clung in an obvious way. Once he’d thrown off the effects of the drug last night, he’d asked a lot of questions. Was his mother okay? Why had that woman stolen him? What happened to her? What happened to the wraith she made? Was it okay to kill a woman if she wanted to kill you?

That last question had stalled Rule out. He could discuss killing with his son, but killing a woman . . . Lily had been there, though, and she hadn’t hesitated. “Killing someone is never a good choice,” she’d said. “But sometimes we don’t have any good choices. Is it okay to kill a dog?”

“No!” Toby had exclaimed, frowning in disbelief at the question.

“I had to shoot two dogs that attacked me. They were sick and possessed by the wraith, but even though that wasn’t their fault, I had to kill them so they wouldn’t kill me. I didn’t have time to find another choice. They attacked too fast. Was that okay?”

Toby had thought that over. “Maybe it’s a little okay, but mostly it’s sad.” He thought some more, then asked, “Was the woman who stole me sick like the dogs?”

“Not the same sickness, but yes, she was ill. She’d made some bad choices, and by the time she took you, she didn’t know what she was doing anymore.”

“Then I guess that’s mostly just sad, too.”

There on the porch swing, Rule smiled. His nadia was wise. His son was, too. They both asked good questions.

The green sedan went by a second time.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Did you know that someone stole Lily, too, when she was about my age?”

Rule looked at Toby, startled. “Yes, I did. She told you about it?”

“Uh-huh. She said a man stole her an’ her friend, and the police came and saved her, but they were too late to save her friend. She said sometimes bad stuff happens that isn’t our fault, but we can’t help thinking about how maybe we could have made it not happen, and I should talk to you when I get to thinking like that.”

“Are you thinking like that now?”

“Sorta.” Toby fidgeted, then said, “I keep thinking that if I hadn’t wanted to play miniature golf, Mom wouldn’t have been at that gas station and then she wouldn’t have been hurt and I wouldn’t have gotten stolen and Lily wouldn’t have had to kill the sick woman.”

“Maybe. Or maybe the sick woman would have tried to steal you somewhere else, and even more people would have been hurt.” Rule squeezed Toby’s shoulder. “There’s a difference between learning from our mistakes and thinking that everything depends on our choices, as if other people’s choices don’t count, too. You aren’t responsible for what other people did.”