Mortal Ties (16 page)

“It means that those of your blood can probably cross, too.”

Those of their blood…the list was pretty damn short. Toby and Benedict. That’s all
Lily knew about for either Rule or Isen. As for Cynna, she didn’t have any siblings,
and her mother was dead. Her father was alive, but he was in Edge. “Those of your
blood, too, I assume,” she said to Cullen.

“Presumably. But a cousin wouldn’t be close enough. At least I don’t think so. Besides,
Stephen is lupi, and the thief
was human.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Hell. I guess we’ll have to ask—”

Isen’s phone sounded.

Rule’s father had never set up individual ring tones for his callers, so the twittery
music didn’t tell her who was calling. But it had to be the Laban Rho. Who else would
call at this hour?

Isen picked up his phone, but then he just looked at it as if he’d forgotten what
it was, or how to operate it, or why he might want to. Before Lily could entertain
any serious worries about incipient senility—which lupi didn’t suffer from—he thumbed
the button. “Hello.”

Not for the first time, Lily wished for lupi hearing. No doubt Rule could hear the
caller just fine. Maybe Cullen could, too, though he was farther away. All she had
to go on was the peculiar look on Isen’s face—and the way Rule suddenly went rigid
beside her.

Isen was very polite to his caller. “Yes, I am. Ah. Yes, my brain is almost beginning
to function again. I can’t say I was expecting your call, but it isn’t the surprise
it might have been.” There was a long pause as the other person spoke. “No, I assure
you I did not. You won’t know what my word means, but you have it.” A short pause.
“You do? Interesting…ah. You do realize that he…Perhaps so. Rule?” He held his phone
out.

Rule didn’t move. “What’s going on?”

“You heard,” Isen said gently. “He wishes to speak with you.”

Still Rule didn’t move. He spoke slowly. “He said his name is Jasper.”

“Jasper Machek.”

“And he’s…” The sentence drifted off as if Rule had no idea how to finish it.

“Yes.” Isen confirmed that the way a kindly doctor might say,
Yes, the biopsy did test positive for cancer.
“He is.”

Rule took the phone. “This is Rule.” A pause. “We won’t discuss that now, I think.
You told Isen you wished to make a deal…ah.” Rather a long pause, then, “That complicates
matters.” He listened some more, then glanced at Lily, gesturing with his free hand
as if he were writing. “Yes,” he said, “just a moment,” as Lily pulled her notebook
and a pen from her purse and handed them to him. He jotted something down. “In the
Marina District? I’ll find it…No. I can’t agree to that.” Another pause. “I don’t
believe I will explain at this time. I will bring another with me who may be able
to help…No, that’s not negotiable.” A longer pause. “Very well. I can reach you at
this number, if necessary? Until later, then.”

He returned the phone to Isen and stood as if he were about to do something. But he
didn’t. He just stood there. “That was the thief. He wishes our assistance.”

Cullen’s eyebrows flew up. “Our assistance?”

“He didn’t make it far with your prototype before someone in turn stole it from him.
A remarkably popular item, for something that doesn’t work correctly. He lives in
San Francisco,” Rule added. “We’re to meet him there at one thirty tomorrow. He wanted
Cynna to come—he’s aware of her Gift—but of course that wouldn’t be safe.”

“Rule.” Lily stood and put her hand on his arm. “Why are we going to help this thief?”

“Is that what we’re going to do? I don’t know…but we’ll go.” He didn’t say anything
for a long moment. “It seems he’s my brother.”

L
ILY
drew in crisp, chilly air through her nose as her feet slapped the asphalt in an
easy rhythm. In the eastern sky behind her, stacked layers of cloud smoldered in crimsons
and purples that stained the bulging shoulders of the humped earth. Lower down, Isen’s
home sprawled almost invisible in the early morning darkness.

One of the perks of living at Clanhome was all the options for where to run. One of
the downsides was that the long commute into the city meant Lily was mostly stuck
with using the road. The sun arrived late to land cradled by mountains, and Lily usually
had to run early.

Not alone, however. Just over a month ago Cynna had asked if Lily would mind company
a couple of times a week on her runs. Lily had said sure, though she hadn’t expected
Cynna to keep it up. For one thing, Cynna was a new mother. For another, she hated
running. Or so she’d always claimed.

But so far Cynna had stuck with it. The little house she shared with Cullen and their
new daughter lay about half a mile west of Isen’s place, so Lily had that first half
mile on her own to warm up, and the last half mile to push herself.
She and Cynna ran together for two miles, total, which was Cynna’s target. Not that
Cynna been able to run the whole way right off the bat. At first she’d made it to
the turnaround point huffing and puffing and waving for Lily to keep going while she
walked back, but she ran both ways now. Good progress for such a short time. Of course,
Cynna was a tad competitive. She hadn’t liked it when Lily kept going and she couldn’t…which
was one reason she’d wanted to join Lily. Motivation.

Sometimes Rule or Cullen joined them. And sometimes Rule started out with Lily, but
didn’t get beyond that first half mile. The chance to stop and see Ryder for a few
minutes, even if she was sound asleep, was too good to pass up. Cullen had no trouble
finding someone to stay with Ryder if he wanted to run, not when they were surrounded
by baby-crazy lupi. Lupi loved kids—all kids—but babies just lit them up. Give one
of them a chance to spend time with a three-month-old bundle of drool, stinky diapers,
and adorable little gurgles, and he’d rearrange his whole week if that’s what it took.

Baby-craving was so universal that custom forbade anyone actually offering to babysit.
This was to keep new parents from being pestered to death. Cynna said that every new
mother ought to get to spend the first few months at a clanhome. The only tricky part
was making sure she didn’t leave anyone out. She kept a list.

Rule and Lily were exempt from the counting and listing. Everyone assumed that close
friends got extra baby time, so they didn’t take offense. Isen was exempt, too. Who
could be upset when the Rho spent time with his newest clan member? So Lily had seen
a fair amount of little Ryder lately. She’d gotten pretty good at diapers. Burping
was still not her strong point, but she could clean a teeny tiny baby butt with the
best of them.

Ryder did have some adorable little gurgles.

This morning, though, she was alone as she neared the path that led to Cynna and Cullen’s
place. The lights were off in the stucco cottage, which could mean everyone was
asleep, but she doubted it. Probably Cullen was awake, even if Ryder wasn’t. Possibly
he hadn’t gone to bed at all. Rule hadn’t.

Cynna was up. Lily hadn’t been sure she would be, not with everything that had happened
last night, but she was waiting where she usually did at the edge of the road, her
pale blond hair almost glowing in the dim light. Lily was surprised by the lift of
relief she felt.

“Hey,” Cynna said as she fell into step alongside Lily.

“Hey, yourself. I wasn’t sure you’d be here this morning.”

“Of course I’m here. Who knows when I’ll get another chance to pump you?”

“Um.” Good Lord. Was that why she was relieved—because she knew Cynna would pump her?
Did she actually
want
to talk about stuff? She never talked about stuff. Well, sometimes with Rule, who
was a sneaky bastard and could wriggle her around into saying things.

“I guess you’re going to San Fran, huh?”

“Rule’s going, so I am.” The mate bond limited how far apart they could be. It was
not consistent about this, but San Francisco was five hundred miles away, well beyond
what they could expect to be okay. “Ruben thinks I should go.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s got a hunch.” Lily had called her boss last night. Ruben Brooks had a precognitive
Gift that was off-the-charts accurate. When he had a hunch, everyone—up to and including
the president—paid attention.

“That’s handy, since you have to go anyway. How’s Rule dealing with his surprise sibling?”

And that answered her question. Her stuff this morning was all about Rule, and Rule
wasn’t talking. “He’s not. At least that’s what it looks like. You know how I don’t
talk about stuff? He’s doing that times ten. Times ten on the logarithmic scale.”

“Is that a math word? Don’t talk math. He’s all shut down?”

“Not exactly.” Rule closed down when he didn’t want to talk about something. Usually
Lily understood and respected that…well, she tried, anyway. But this was different.
“He didn’t ask any questions. Did Cullen tell you that? This Jasper Machek calls and
says he wants us to come to San Francisco and help him out, and Rule didn’t ask one
question.”

“Not everyone deals with a shock by asking questions.”

“I know, but he still isn’t asking questions. He’s avoiding them. Did you know that
Isen knew about this Jasper guy? Not a lot, maybe.” Lily had run a check on Machek.
It turned up plenty that Isen hadn’t mentioned. “But he knew Rule’s mother had had
another child a few years after she handed Rule over. He knew Rule had a brother,
and he never told him. And Rule’s cool with that. So cool he left the room when I
started asking Isen questions about Jasper.”

“Just walked out?”

“Not in a rude way. Suddenly he had things to do.”

“Huh.” Cynna fell silent.

Rule had said he needed to arrange their trip, including the security. A nice, valid
activity, only there was no reason for him to go outside to do it. Lily had just started
on her questions when Isen’s phone rang again.

That time it was the Laban Rho. Isen had told Leo that he was busy at the moment.
No, he didn’t want Leo to call back. He was to wait on hold until Isen was ready to
speak with him.

“I can leave,” Lily had said.

“No, I want him to wait. First he’ll be patient. That won’t last long. Leo has never
mastered patience. Then he’ll be increasingly angry. That will last longer, but eventually
he’ll move from anger into dread. That’s when I’ll talk to him.”

Isen had kept the other Rho waiting on hold a full thirty minutes while he talked
to Lily about Jasper…and Jasper’s mother. When Isen deemed Leo sufficiently steeped
in
dread, he’d dismissed Lily. “If you can find Rule, tell him I want him. If you can’t,
have someone track him down. He may be running.”

She hadn’t found Rule. She hadn’t found out what Leo’s fate was, either. When she
came back inside, Isen had retreated to his study, and when he closed that door no
one was supposed to disturb him for anything short of an emergency. Badly as she wanted
to know things, she couldn’t call it an emergency. She’d gone to bed.

Cynna broke the silence. “Lupi have a word for them, you know. For their half siblings
on the mothers’ side.”

Lily snorted. “Human?”

Cynna flashed her a grin. “Yeah, but this word is just for that relationship. For
out-clan siblings. They call them
alius
kin.”

“I’ve seen that word somewhere. Maybe in one of those journals the Rhej—I mean Hannah—had
me read.” Before Hannah died, Lily wasn’t supposed to use her name. Now she was, because
“the Rhej” meant Cynna. Thank God Cynna had told her to ignore all that no-naming-the-Rhej
business. Bad enough, she’d said, that the lupi mostly wouldn’t use her name anymore.
She didn’t want to stop hearing it entirely. “I thought it just meant kin.”

“I don’t know what
alius
kin would mean to someone who knows real Latin, but lupi translate it as
otherkin
.”

Kin who are other. Not us, not clan. “Like they aren’t real siblings.”

“It makes sense, if you look at the history. It used to be rare for lupi to be raised
by their mothers. If the mother was married, it wasn’t to the baby’s father, and if
she wasn’t, out-of-wedlock babies were a BFD for centuries. So it was normal for lupi
to grow up not knowing their mothers’ families at all, and only natural they didn’t
feel a close bond. Kin, not clan, you know? Chances were good their human half siblings
didn’t even want to know about them, much less call them ‘brother,’ so it went both
ways.” She shrugged. “A lot of lupi are raised by their moms now, at least part of
the time, but the attitude has held on.”

Lily thought that over. Rule had never wanted to know if he had any
alius
kin, had he? He’d never asked. And yet they were going to San Francisco. Jasper called,
and she and Rule were headed for San Francisco. She didn’t think it was just about
the prototype. “That’s part of it, maybe.”

“But not all?”

Lily was pretty sure some of it—maybe most of it—had to do with the mother this Jasper
Machek shared with Rule. The one who’d handed a two-week-old baby to Isen and walked
away, uninterested in whether her son lived or died. Learning about Jasper meant learning
something about that woman, didn’t it? “Her name was Celeste Babineaux. Rule’s mother,
I mean. She was twenty-nine when she had Rule.”