Iron Night (32 page)

I didn't like the tone of her voice, and I wouldn't have phrased it that way myself, but at this point I was in agreement with Suze. But I kept as much of that off my face as possible as I said to Lilah, “Let's head to your apartment, then.”

•   •   •

“So, how are you going to flush out Lulu?” I asked as we drove to Lilah's apartment. She'd taken a cab to the hotel, and now we were all one rather awkward group in the Fiesta, with Suze choosing to stake out the backseat with the bags. I would've felt more confident in this plan if Prudence was on her way as well, but by the time the brainstorm had happened it was already ten a.m., and on a perfect blue-sky day like today my sister was already holed up in her hotel room.

“I'll tell her I might be miscarrying,” Lilah said.

I nearly rear-ended the car in front of us, and the Fiesta's brakes squealed and threw all of us forward against our seat belts.

“Fort, when this is all over, we are playing some fucking poker,” Suze griped behind me. “Recognize a goddamn lie.”

“Yeah, definitely not pregnant.” Lilah eyed me.

I could feel an impending question about her waistline, and I cut it off. “Why would Lulu care if you're pregnant?” I asked. “People are squirting out seven-eighths babies now—why worry about a halfsie's baby?”

Lilah shook her head. “You aren't understanding the mentality. This generation is what might make us a sustainable breeding population. Any of us who get pregnant, as long as it isn't with a human, is valuable to them. Besides, I'm going to bait the hook with something good, something I know she won't be able to resist.”

“If she's hanging out with the Ad-hene, she probably won't buy a story about her favorite kind of incest,” Suze noted dryly.

Lilah made a face. “Not that. But I've been getting the hard sell on one of the three-quarter boys lately. Cole's a jackass, but I went out with him a few months ago, just to shut everyone up for a while. He showed up wasted, ended up sleeping on my couch for the night. If I say now that I actually had sex with him, the person I'm calling will believe me.”

“Who are you calling?” I asked. “You obviously don't have Lulu's direct number or you would've already handed that over.”

“Peggie,” she answered. “She's a half-blood like me, and we've been friends since we were toddlers. But when I left after high school, she stayed. She's not quite a true believer, but if I call her with this and say that I don't know whether I wanted to keep the baby or not, I know she'll act for the community and call Dr. Leamaro.”

All these crosses and hybrids were sloshing together in my head. “What would a halfsie and a three-quarter produce again?”

“A five-eighths,” she said readily, unintentionally highlighting exactly how creepy this whole situation was. “Not as good as a three-quarter but definitely better than a half-blood. Dr. Leamaro won't risk one being lost.”

“Punch the gas, Fort,” Suze said. “I have officially topped out on the amount of fractions and pregnancy talk that I can handle for the damn day. I'm really ready to start kicking ass instead.”

“Fair enough,” I muttered, inching the speedometer upward.

•   •   •

Lilah lived on her own in a cramped one-bedroom apartment, furnished with the best in space-saving Swedish interior design. She'd placed the call as soon as we'd arrived, and since then Suze and I had been crouched uncomfortably in Lilah's coat closet, waiting to spring into action.

“How long has it been?” Suze hissed loudly, managing to elbow me in the kidney as she shifted position.

“Two hours,” I snapped, checking my watch in the sliver of light from the cracked door. “Shut up.” I kept shifting my weight, trying to stave off pins and needles.

“This isn't going to work.” Suze had gone very much on record as a doubter of this plan.

I had a lot of her doubts, but it had become clear that this was our best shot at this point, and I poked her with my own elbow and made a shushing sound.

“Guys, a car just pulled up.” Lilah had been positioned at her front window since she placed the call, and I could hear the jumble of fear and adrenaline in her voice. “Door is opening . . . Yeah, it's Lavinia, and she's alone. She's got her medical bag. She's coming up the walk.”

My heart thudded in my chest, and I could feel Suze tense beside me. Both of us were positioned so that we could peer out of the partially opened door. Lilah had drawn back from the window—we'd all agreed that it would look less suspicious if she wasn't waiting right at the door, especially since she wasn't supposed to know that her friend had called in the doctor. When Lulu's loud, impatient knocking filled the small apartment and Lilah moved to answer it, I carefully thumbed off the safety on my Colt.

Lilah pulled open the door, revealing Dr. Lavinia Leamaro, and exclaimed loudly in fake surprise. I winced at the sound—the theater had not lost any true daughter in Lilah, and the lie was written clearly across her face. But Lulu wasn't looking at Lilah's face—those brilliant green eyes that were such a surprise against her dark skin were fixed on Lilah's stomach, and for the first time I truly understood what Lilah had told me so many times.

When I had met Lulu, she had seemed normal enough—professional, if a little light on medical ethics. But now I saw the raw avarice on her face when she looked at Lilah's belly, and whatever mask she'd worn had dropped, revealing a base fanaticism that was fundamentally repellent to me.

“You should've told me earlier, Lilah! It took that Peggie forever to get a message to me.” Lulu stretched out her free hand toward Lilah, grasping and feeling at her flat stomach, not even aware of the way that Lilah flinched at her touch. Her voice was thick with satisfaction. “It's Cole's, she said. You good girl. Your mother always said that you'd come around eventually. Now I'll just check you out—” And, not releasing either her medical bag or her grip on Lilah, Lulu walked farther into the house and pushed the door closed with her foot.

That's what Suze and I had been waiting for—the final confirmation that no one else was coming inside, and that Soli hadn't been lurking somewhere. Lilah threw herself backward at the same moment that Suze and I burst out of the closet, managing to avoid tripping over each other. I held the gun on Lulu, and she froze in the middle of the room.

“So glad you could make it,” I told her. Would I find the tool that she'd used to slice Gage apart in that innocuous medical bag? Anger bubbled up in me, and my voice was as cold as any of my siblings could boast. “I have a lot to ask you,” I promised her.

Comprehension dawned on Lulu's face, followed immediately by a contorting rage. Ignoring the fact that I was aiming a gun right at her head, she turned and made a lunge for Lilah, a wordless shriek of anger ripping out of her throat. Lilah barely pulled back enough to avoid Lulu's grasping hands, and Suzume tackled the older half-blood to the floor. Lulu was fighting hard, driven by an anger that seemed to have almost pushed her past the point of sanity, struggling not to escape but to get at Lilah, and doing it with so much energy that Suze was clearly hard-pressed to subdue her. I turned the safety back on and shoved the Colt into Lilah's hands, hoping that she wouldn't drop it, and waded in to help Suze. It took both of us to wrestle her onto the ground, and after several breathless minutes when Lulu still wouldn't stop fighting, Suze was eventually left with no other option than to throttle her into unconsciousness.

From her own overnight bag, Suze produced a bag of wire ties, bungee cords, and thin but strong cord. I did my best not to overthink her possession of that particular bag of tricks. Lilah had a nice wooden office chair in her bedroom, and the three of us (mostly Suze, with me attempting to reproduce her best knots and Lilah showing a complete Girl Scouts epic fail) tied Lulu to the chair. Clearly uncomfortable with her role as Judas, Lilah retreated from the bedroom, while Suze and I sat down to wait.

We didn't have to wait long. In a few minutes Lulu woke up and immediately began screaming at the top of her lungs.

“Try all you want,” Suze said lazily. “Lilah's neighbors are only going to notice that her TV is on very loudly today.” Once again, Suze's fox tricks had proven extremely useful. Lulu stopped screaming and stared at them, her whole body quivering with rage. I couldn't help but be amazed at her reaction, even as I kept my face stony—my reaction to waking up tied to a chair would definitely have been pants-wetting terror, not foaming anger.

“That little bitch,” Lulu snapped. “Oh, she will pay for this. I always warned that her parents were too soft, too—”

I cut in. “That's not what we're talking about today.” I ticked the items off on my fingers. “Fertility magic. Hiring a skinwalker. Murdering at least four men in the past year. Those are the topics I'm interested in. You can start wherever you'd like.”

Focusing her green eyes on me, Lulu hissed. “We pay the tithes on our businesses. Nothing else is of concern to the Scotts.”

“Everything in this territory is my mother's business. Now start talking. Start by telling me where the skinwalker is and who hired her.”

Lulu snapped her mouth shut and glared at me, sullen and mute.

I waited, then tried again. “Felix Ortiz was tattooed this morning at the Iron Needle. Where is he now?”

Lulu said nothing.

“Where do you kill the men?”

“I have nothing to say to you,” Lulu said, her voice low and stubborn.

I had one card left to play. “You can talk to me or you can talk with my sister.” The first hint of real fear flickered through Lulu's eyes, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but I noted it and pushed hard. “I don't think you'd enjoy Prudence's”—and I paused, saying the word almost as if I savored it—“methods.”

Defiance and fanaticism flared. “It doesn't matter what you do. I will
never
betray the Ad-hene.” And looking at her face and the complete absence of concern for her own safety, I had to conclude that Lulu really meant it. I met Suze's eyes and jerked my head toward the other room. She slid off the bed where she'd been sitting and followed me out of the room.

I closed the bedroom door carefully behind us and looked around. Lilah apparently dealt with anxiety by cleaning, because she was busily attacking her already spotless furniture with a dusting cloth. I asked Suze quietly to sit with the prisoner; given the extent to which we'd tied her down, I couldn't imagine Lulu extricating herself, but I'd seen enough James Bond movies to be leery about leaving someone tied to a chair and unattended for long.

I bypassed Lilah's cleaning frenzy and walked to the far corner of the kitchen—it was too small of an apartment for real privacy, but I wanted at least the illusion of it for this conversation. After a deep breath, I called my sister.

She was ensconced in her hotel room and answered my call on the first ring. After a quick exchange of greetings, I filled her in on everything that had happened. She listened without interrupting.

When I had finished, she said, “Well
done
, little brother,” in such an approving tone of voice that I seriously wondered for a moment whether I was speaking to an impersonator.

“Uh, thanks,” I said, still uncertain how to respond to this new, more supportive Prudence. “Listen. When can you get over here and question her? Apparently zealots are kind of tough to interrogate.”

“The worst; that is true,” she said sympathetically. Then, with an odd brightness, “I will head out as soon as this accursed sun goes down enough. Given what I've seen of the hourly forecast, about three, perhaps three and a half hours.”

“That long?” I asked, horrified. My sister's tolerance for sunlight was definitely going down.

“Patience, brother. It will be all right. Make sure that the half-blood is secured and then leave her alone to stew. The wait will soften her up.” I began to protest, and she made soothing noises. “I will get the information as quickly as possible, brother, I assure you. Now, listen to me, because this is very important.”

“Yes?” I asked, reaching for a nearby pad of paper just in case I needed to take notes.

“Don't be nice to her. No food, no drinks, and definitely no bathroom.”

“Um . . . ?” That last part made me very nervous. Lilah's apartment was carpeted.

“Urinating oneself can be an important part of being broken down,” Prudence assured me.

I gulped. This newer, friendlier Prudence was definitely still my sister. “You're the expert,” I managed, reminding myself that with a life on the line, I was probably going to be making a few
24
-esque decisions.

My reply apparently delighted Prudence, because she burbled happily, “Ah, Fortitude. The things I can teach you.”

Even as my mouth made the appropriate good-byes, an icy chill went up my spine and I wondered whether I was really prepared for my sister's version of sibling bonding exercises.

It was a long, tense afternoon while we waited for my sister to arrive and begin torturing Lulu. With nothing else to do, I joined Lilah in the distraction of cleaning. Suze remained impervious to the atmosphere, shifted to her fox form, and took a long nap on the sofa (all four furry paws in the air) while Lilah and I defrosted her freezer and cleaned out her fridge. I tried calling Matt three times, but he didn't pick up, and I ended up leaving voice mails. I winced at what that might mean, but comforted myself with the knowledge that I hadn't told him what hotel Suze and I had stayed at, so there wasn't any chance that he had tailed us again.

When my sister arrived at a quarter to five, the first hints of orange were gathering in the clouds, heralding the start of a spectacular sunset. Being relieved at Prudence's arrival was definitely a personal first for me, but the feeling flooded through me as I pulled open the front door at her imperious knock to reveal her, her lacy white parasol adding an almost steampunk accent to her usual Stepford-wifish attire. Her blue eyes were gleaming and there was an eager spring in her step as I directed her to the bedroom. Clearly Prudence enjoyed her work.