Mortal Sins, page 17
part #5 of World of the Lupi Series
“I see,” she said gravely. “Is math a high price to pay?”
“Well …” He darted a glance at his father. “Not real high. I don’t like it much, but I can do fractions pretty fast, so it’s not going to take me lots of time. Did it help, hearing what the ghosts said?”
“Yes, though I haven’t sorted out what it means yet. Apparently the perp is male. That should help.” She glanced at Rule. “I’m thinking it’s lucky my boss is a precog.”
His eyebrows shot up. “Ruben foresaw this?”
“No, but remember the investigative panel I told you about? The one he put together after that ghost disrupted Cynna’s wedding?”
Toby immediately had to know about the ghost. Lily was happy to let Rule take over telling the tale while her own thoughts turned to ghosts … and memory.
After the incident at the wedding, Ruben’s precognitive Gift had prodded him to find out more about ghosts. The Unit lacked a medium, so the experts he’d brought in had all been civilians—a varied crew, as it turned out, but they’d agreed on one crucial point: no one knew what caused ghosts.
Murder was certainly a factor, but not all violent deaths threw ghosts. The suddenness of death was a factor, too, but sometimes a lingering death resulted in a ghost. The old canard about the ghost needing to resolve something held true, yet any number of people died with serious issues left unresolved—and went on to the Big Whatever without leaving any ghostly residue behind.
Most ghosts didn’t linger long. Some did. Most couldn’t affect the physical world. Some could, using what might be telekinesis—doors slamming, knickknacks falling off shelves, that sort of thing. Many ghosts were sad or confused. A few were actively hostile.
None of the mediums had reported ghosts who screamed in their heads.
The experts didn’t agree on what a ghost was. Some—those who didn’t believe in an afterlife—insisted that ghosts were a sort of congealed energy that failed to dissipate when the person who’d generated it died. They were simply patterns, not people, lacking real cognition or sense of self. But to a woman—and for reasons no one understood, mediums were always female—the mediums disagreed.
Lily had to cast her vote with the woo-woo crowd on this one. Something survived beyond the body. Might as well call it a soul.
What bugged Lily was that not all mediums were Gifted. At Ruben’s request, she’d checked them out. Turned out that a few people were able to see ghosts without possessing a hint of magic. That had been confirmed in double-blind tests comparing their sightings with those of Gifted mediums. They couldn’t interact consistently with the ghosts, though. Only those with a medium’s Gift could.
This struck the dead-is-dead experts as proof that ghosts weren’t people. They claimed that the medium fed the ghosts energy, giving them a semblance of life. The mediums had done some eye-rolling over that. Sure, the ghosts were using the medium’s power to communicate, but even without that magical boost they were discrete entities. Maybe not the entire soul, but some part of it.
The part with the memories. Lily’s heart bumped up a beat. That was the other thing everyone agreed on. When asked about this world or their current existence, ghosts’ answers ranged from vague to nonsensical. But they remembered themselves and their lives. Clearly. Vividly.
As for names … there was something about names in the report. She couldn’t quite remember …
“Penny for them,” Rule said, taking her hand.
“Hmm.” They’d almost reached the Asteglio back gate. Unlike the two males with her, she’d lost track of her surroundings. “Nothing coherent, I’m afraid. I wish I could have asked the ghosts some questions through Talia.”
“Why didn’t you?” Toby asked. “Talia would’ve done it, I bet, especially with me staying close enough to make them go away if they got mean.”
“I’m not supposed to interview a minor without the knowledge and consent of her parents, much less encourage her to use her Gift for me. And it might not be safe for Talia. You can’t be beside her every minute, and I don’t know what to make of the new ones screaming at her.”
“Huh.” Toby thought that over as they passed back into his yard. “Can you get an adult medium to come talk to the ghosts?”
“Maybe. There aren’t any in the Unit.” And she wasn’t sure a medium could help. Ghosts were seriously unreliable witnesses, which was why Ruben hadn’t made more of a push to recruit a medium for the Unit.
Toby wanted to know if Rule was going to tell Grammy about him sneaking out. Rule chuckled and said she might ask for an explanation when she saw Toby doing fractions on a sunny summer morning. “Morning?” Toby said—a little too loudly. Rule hushed him, and Toby launched a whispered campaign against morning math, as opposed to afternoon math, that carried the two of them up the stairs.
Lily stayed behind, clearing away the plate and glass she’d forgotten earlier. Before heading up, she grabbed her purse and dug out her phone; it was the quickest way to send an e-mail. She needed the report on ghosts that Ruben’s panel had produced.
An hour ago, climbing the stairs had been foreplay. Now they were just stairs, the path she needed to take to reach the bed she was longing for … and for entirely different reasons. Somewhere between rinsing her plate and sending the e-mail, exhaustion had hit.
Rule was still in with Toby when she reached the top of the stairs. She headed straight for the bedroom.
Parents do this sort of thing all the time, she thought as she pulled off her jacket and unbuckled her shoulder holster. Coitus interruptus took on a whole new meaning with kids around. Maybe most parents didn’t include the walking-a-wolf-down-the-alley bit, but kids climbed out windows. Kids did all sorts of crazy things, and parents had to sift the rights and wrongs and dangers of a situation, and somehow convey all that to their kids.
Preferably without yelling. She hung up the jacket, pulled off her T-shirt and bra, and dropped the last two on the closet floor, regretting the lack of a clothes hamper. Not that her mother had raised her voice, exactly. She’d turned shrill. Sarcastic. If there was a way to show that you disapproved of an action without disapproving of the child, her mother had never found it.
As far as Lily could tell, she hadn’t looked. Lily had quit listening long ago. Didn’t stop reacting to her, though, did I? She sighed, turned off the bedside lamp, and slipped naked between the sheets, too tired to dig out a sleep shirt. Which she seldom bothered with at home, but she had intended to use here.
Wasn’t Rule going awfully far to the other extreme, though? Sure, he’d disciplined Toby, but first he’d said he was proud of the boy. Talk about mixed messages.
Sneaking out of the house was serious. Even in Halo, bad things happened to kids on the streets at night. And right now there was something or someone who could make people kill.
She didn’t hear Rule come in, but she felt him. Eyes closed, she listened to the rustling sound of him undressing, and she smiled. Oh, yeah, she was stupid in love with the man. She knew his clothes would go on the floor, not out of sight in the closet, and still she smiled.
He’d probably pick them up in the morning. He knew disorder bothered her, so he usually remembered. Maybe, she thought sleepily, it worked out better for kids if their parents—the ones they started out with, or the ones they collected along the way—didn’t agree about everything. Might as well hope that was true, because that’s what most kids got.
The mattress dipped. Automatically she rolled onto her side so Rule could curve his body around hers. He kissed her ear, sighed, and sank onto the pillow, lazily draping one arm over her waist to cup her breast. “We missed our moment, didn’t we?”
She nodded without opening her eyes.
“Not going to tell me I was wrong about Toby?” he murmured.
“Nope. Too tired.” Though she couldn’t resist adding, “I don’t think this is the first time he’s slipped out.”
“I’m sure it isn’t. We’re looser about some rules than you’re used to, in part because our children can’t lie to us. We don’t allow disobedience about the important things.”
She suspected they defined “important things” differently. “You would have been a lot more upset if he’d broken his word.”
“Yes.” He nuzzled her hair. “He’s my only son, nadia. He will almost certainly be Rho someday. His word will bind the entire clan, and lupi will die to uphold it if necessary. He must understand the weight of his promises.”
It was a cold, scary ideal to impose on a boy, but he was talking about himself as much as his son. And, she realized, his father. She had a glimmering of what it meant to be Rho. The head of a clan was, in an essential way, separate from the rest, set apart by a responsibility the others couldn’t share.
Did Isen, in holding the clan’s mantle, enjoy the comfort of it that the rest of the clan shared? Or was it another burden? Or some combination of the two?
Mantles … something she was going to ask … but sleep dragged at her. As her mind shut down, she snuggled closer to Rule so he would know he wasn’t alone. But her last thoughts, oddly, were about his father.
She had no doubt Isen Turner could have sex as often as he wished. But did anyone simply sleep with him? Or was he alone in that way, too?
TWENTY-ONE
RULE slept in the next morning, which annoyed him. Normally he needed no more than five hours of sleep, but he’d done without entirely the night before. It was just past six thirty when Lily slipped out of bed, waking him—and spoiling his plan for how to wake her. She was in a hurry, unfortunately. She’d called a briefing for seven thirty.
Ah, well. One of the pleasures of their bond was knowing there would be other mornings. He spoke firmly to himself about the value of delayed gratification as he showered, having seen Lily off with a decent kiss, followed by a mug of decent coffee to take with her.
He finished his own coffee while shaving, then headed downstairs, carrying his laptop and the empty mug. His business wasn’t as urgent as Lily’s, but still needed tending. Financial matters, mostly—he handled the investments for the clan—plus some details concerning the All-Clan. Plus he needed to speak with the Leidolf Lu Nuncio again about the gens compleo.
Toby was still asleep, but his grandmother wasn’t. He exchanged “good mornings” with her while refilling his mug. She’d applied her makeup already, as was her habit, which he took as a good sign. Yesterday’s violence had been hard on her. “You slept well?”
“Surprisingly so.” She took down a large mixing bowl. “I’m making pancakes this morning. How many will you want?”
“Pancakes.” He smiled with pleasure. “I’ll take as many as you care to offer. I’m good with eggs, but have never mastered pancakes. May I help?”
“You can get the eggs and buttermilk out. Lily doesn’t make pancakes?”
“Lily butters a mean slice of toast.”
She chuckled. “Toby told me you do almost all of the cooking. I must say, I was surprised. I’d imagined you with an endless stream of women cooking for you.”
“Mrs. Asteglio, I haven’t—”
“Louise. I should have asked you to call me Louise years ago. And I know you haven’t exposed Toby to that endless stream I imagined flowing through your … kitchen.”
Surprised, amused, he acted instinctively, bending to kiss her cheek. “Thank you. Does this mean I’m no longer Mr. Turner?”
Her cheeks pinked. “Of course.”
“Are you all right this morning?” he asked softly. “Yesterday was … difficult.”
“It reminded me of why I never worked in the ER. Blood doesn’t bother me, but violence …” Trouble overtook her eyes, and bafflement. She shook her head sharply. “Never mind. I deal best by staying busy. You can separate out the whites, if you like, and whip them—soft peaks. The mixer’s in the second drawer by the sink.”
He retrieved the mixer. “You trust me to know about soft peaks?”
“I expect you’ve the sense to ask if you don’t. It’s good for Toby to see that men can be handy in the kitchen.”
“Lily’s learning. It offends her sense of fair play for me to do all the cooking, so she’s—” The doorbell rang. Rule didn’t allow himself to frown, but it wasn’t likely to be good news. Not at seven fifteen in the morning.
Perhaps Cullen had caught an earlier flight? “I’ll get it.”
“No, you won’t.” Mrs. Asteglio set down the bowl and started for the door. “My house, my door. You mean well, but I don’t need to be shielded.”
He considered not following her, which he thought she’d prefer. But not for long, so he was only a few paces behind her when she opened the door—without using the peephole he’d had installed years ago, dammit. She just swung the door open to whoever was there.
And said not a word.
Into the silence came another voice, one Rule hadn’t heard in person in nine years. “Hi, Mom. I’m not sure if I’m the bad penny turning up or the prodigal daughter to be welcomed with … Oh, hell, that’s cloying. Never mind. May I come in?”
LILY briefed her four borrowed agents along with the sheriff, the chief of police, and a couple of local detectives with homicide experience. She gave them both outline and details, omitting the source when she said there was “reason to think” the perp was male. “Not necessarily a human male,” she added. “As I said earlier, my consultant thinks it could be some creature accidentally blown here at the Turning.”
“Your consultant.” The chief of police had a good sneer going in his voice, though he kept his face bland. “Would that be someone who turns hairy once a month and howls at the moon?”
She’d already realized the chief was going to be a pain. Idiots usually were. He’d glared at her throughout the briefing, asking the occasional dumb-ass question, implying that anyone who claimed to possess magic was by definition stupid, untrustworthy, and probably evil.
This time she just looked at him a second, then went on as if he hadn’t spoken. He wanted to make her angry. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. “I’m hoping that the sheriff’s department and the city police will concentrate on learning everything there is to know about Meacham and Hodge. We have to figure out what they have in common. Why those two men instead of two others? This is your town, your people. You’re the best ones to handle that end.”
“Yeah, but is that going to tell us anything about who or what is doing this?” Deacon asked bluntly. “Seems like we need someone who can figure out the magic end of things.”
That would be nice. “My boss has experts looking into the possibilities, but the more information we can give them, the more help they can give us.”
“And what will your people be doing?”
“Visiting veterinarians.” Her people looked surprised by that. At least, three of them did. Nothing dented Brown’s doughy cynicism. “Human practitioners work up to human sacrifice. We need to know if animals have gone missing or been found mutilated or dead of unexplained causes. There’s also the possibility our perp isn’t human and came through at the Turning. If so, what has he been doing the last seven months? Again, there could be a connection with missing or dead animals.”
“Miss Yu.” The chief was one of those people with features too small for his face. He had narrow eyes, a dainty little nose, and a small mouth just made for pursing in disapproval, all crowded into the bottom half of his face and overwhelmed by the expanse of freshly shaved pink skin. “You talked about wanting our input, so here’s mine. You’ve built a whole huge hullabaloo out of nothing. These murders aren’t related. Meacham went nuts and killed his family. Hodge hated weers—”
“You have evidence of that?” she asked sharply.
“Not yet, but I’m betting we can confirm it pretty easy. It’s obvious, isn’t it? He went after your lover and maybe his boy.”
“There are no reports from witnesses at yesterday’s shooting to suggest Hodge aimed at Rule Turner or his son. I’m one of those witnesses. In addition, physical evidence confirms that the victims were not in a line of sight between Hodge and Turner. There is nothing to suggest that he was the intended target.”
“The old man could be senile, could be using, could be just plain nuts. You never know. But the plain fact is, there’s nothing to say these two killers are connected, nothing to say they were under some weird-ass compulsion, and nothing to prove there’s death magic involved.” Such a little mouth made for tight smiles, one of which he offered now. “If death magic even exists. I’m thinking it’s as much hogwash as demonic possession.”
Lily nodded. “I see. We’ll skip the part about demonic possession being hogwash, save to mention that the Catholic Church, several Protestant denominations, the FBI, the Secret Service, Congress, and the President of the United States disagree. Otherwise, you might have a workable theory—if I were willing to stipulate that I’m a liar.”
“Well, now, I didn’t say that. Anyone can make a mistake. All this magic stuff—people make mistakes with that all the time.”
She leaned forward, looking him right in the eye. “I’m telling you that I’ve touched death magic. I know what it feels like, and there is no possibility of a mistake. Those bodies have death magic on them. So does Meacham. So does Hodge. So did the damned dogs that attacked me and Sheriff Deacon. Am I lying?”
Apparently he was unwilling to commit to that. He fell back on glaring.
“Is your department going to cooperate with this investigation?”
“Cooperate! You call this cooperation? You’re just telling us what’s what while you ignore what we say.”
“When you disagree with the evidence of my senses, I do. I hope the police department will participate in the investigation. We could use the manpower. But if not, Sheriff Deacon has good people.”
He was silent, fuming.
Nathan Brown stirred. “Horace—it is Horace, right? I nearly forgot to give you a message. I was talkin’ to Marianne Potter over in Charlotte just last night. She said to tell you hello. Asked after that pretty little wife of yours.”
