Inked

Then she asked about Mariah Friar and the baby she claimed was Steve’s.

“Yeah, he knew about that. He was…” Jason glanced at Rule. “Well, you know Steve. It hurt him for her to claim that, but he was gentle with her. Told her the baby wasn’t his. She didn’t believe him. Didn’t want to, I think. She loves the idea that she really poked a stick in her old man’s eye, you know?”

“Is she estranged from her father?”

“Yeah, but…see, Mariah’s always trying to get a reaction. She wants him to get mad. To react like she mattered. He won’t react because—this is kind of creepy—he says his daughter died. That’s how he puts it. Mariah Friar is alive, but his daughter is dead.”

“You know Friar?”

“It’s a small town. We’ve bumped a few times, but I avoid him whenever possible.”

“You seem to know Mariah pretty well.”

“Well…yeah.”

Something in those guileless blue eyes made her ask, “How well?”

“Geez.” He rubbed his short hair with one hand. “If I answer that honestly, you’ll think I’m scum. But Mariah’s like clan. She thinks of sex as comfort or friendship or just pleasure. She isn’t hung up on fidelity.”

Lily didn’t say anything. Rule didn’t either. Maybe he smelled disapproving, though, because Jason spoke earnestly to him. “She was pretty messed up back when you knew her. She’s a lot more together now, or I wouldn’t…but Steve really helped her. She feels good about herself these days.”

Lily took them back to the subject. “You met Mariah through Steve?”

“More or less. There’s this group, see. They’re all pretty young, or most of them, and they see themselves as rebels. They want to, uh, champion our cause. Mariah’s one of them.”

“Is this group mostly female?”

“Well…yeah, but not all of them.”

“Lupus groupies.”

“Some of them, maybe.” Jason looked uncomfortable, glancing again at Rule. “They’re pretty tame compared to the ones you’d find in the city at a place like Club Hell. More witch wa

Rule spoke. “And one practicing witch.”

“Adele doesn’t like to be called a witch. Everyone thinks that means Wiccan, and she isn’t.”

“Adele?”

“Adele Blanco.”

Lily looked at Rule. He hardly ever interjected himself into an interview. “You know her.”

“Slightly. She’s older than the others in her little group.”

Interesting. Apparently Adele wasn’t “a lovely older woman.” Lily studied Rule’s face, which gave away nothing. But that, too, was a giveaway. “You don’t like her.”

Rule shrugged. “We had a disagreement a few years ago.”

“Rule checks in on us from time to time,” Jason said. “A few years back, he decided too many of the younger lupi were hanging with Adele’s group, that we were, uh, listening to her more than was good for the clan. Rule told us to stop gathering here, and Adele took it wrong. You don’t like her?” Jason asked Rule, more curious than upset. “I didn’t think you blamed her.”

“Blame is the wrong word. I believe she enjoyed her influence over the younger people too much.”

“I don’t see it like that. Some of her ideas don’t work out, but she helps, too. She organized that protest outside Friar’s home. She teaches some of the group who have a bit of a Gift.”

Lily asked, “What’s her branch of spellcraft, if she isn’t Wiccan?”

“She calls herself an eclectic. She draws from a lot of traditions.”

“Any that involve tattoos, like the Msaidizi? The Dizzies,” she added when it was obvious the Swahili word meant nothing to him.

“Oh. I don’t think so. She isn’t African-American.”

“Not all of the Dizzies were.”

“Yeah? Well, I don’t think Adele was one of them. She doesn’t have tattoos, except for a little one on her ankle, and that’s pretty standard stuff—a rose. That’s how the Dizzies worked, right? They tattooed their spells on their bodies.”

“Pretty much.” That’s how Cy

“Sure. Doesn’t pretty much every magical practice include charms?”

“I don’t know. Hers any good?”

Jason grimaced. “I guess. I mean, I know they work sometimes, but I can’t help thinking…”

“What?”

“If Adele hadn’t let Mariah talk her into making that fertility charm, maybe Mariah wouldn’t be so damned certain that Steve fathered her baby.”

Chapter 7

By the time they left Bobbie’s, the sun had dropped behind the western mountains. It wasn’t full dark, but the air was thick with dusk and very still. Already the temperature was dropping.

Del Cielo was a town of slants. Tucked into a niche in the crumpled rock of the mountains, the only level spots were man-made. The sidewalk she and Rule walked to get to her car was buckled as the earth beneath it slowly resumed its accustomed warp.

Jason had left with Hal Newman, who would take him to Clanhome. Until this was sorted out, Jason would live under the watchful eye of his Rho—who’d pledged Rule’s apartment building as bond.

That had startled Lily. “But that building’s got to be worth several million. That’s not a reasonable bond for an LVN.”

Hal had answered. “Lupi are seen as flight risks. Some judges won’t grant bond at all, but fortunately we got Judge Soreli. She knows enough about us to understand that if Jason’s Rho says to stay put, he will. She wanted to make sure Isen was motivated to keep Jason around.”

Lily wasn’t sure money was the same incentive for lupi it would be for others. Isen would hate to lose that much of Nokolai’s capital, but would he surrender one of his clan to unjust imprisonment in order to hang on to a building, however valuable?

She’d glanced at Rule and decided not to ask.

When she and Rule reached her dusty white sedan, she stopped, cocked her head, and asked, “You know how to find Friar’s place?” Robert Friar might be Del Cielo’s most prosperous citizen, but he didn’t actually live in the little town, though he’d been born here. He had a small ranch just north of it.

“Yes.”

“Okay.” She tossed him the keys. “You drive. I want to think.”

When they were both inside, Rule started the car. “Am I a chauffeur, or will I be going inside when we reach Friar’s home?”

“Inside, I think. He’d be within his rights to refuse to be interviewed with you present. If he does, I’ll have to take it private. But I’d like to see how he reacts to you.” She buckled up and got started on the thinking.

But her mind stuck on one point. Rule knew where Robert Friar lived. He knew a lot more about Del Cielo and its inhabitants than she’d realized. She decided she’d better clear this up so she didn’t keep sticking on it. “Apparently you’ve been hanging out here off and on for years and know several of the players in our little skit.”

He was silent as he pulled away from the curb and into what passed for traffic here. “I should have told you more on the plane. I didn’t intend to withhold information. I…This sounds foolish.”

“You get to be foolish sometimes.” Right after hearing of a close friend’s death, for example.

“On the plane, I wasn’t considering what I should tell you because I wasn’t really thinking, but also because…You’re so present to me now, so much a part of my life, that sometimes I almost forget that you haven’t always been with me.” He grimaced. “Foolish, as I said.”

Yeah. Also unbearably sweet. She didn’t realize she’d reached for his hand until she felt it close around hers.

For about a block, neither of them spoke. Then he continued in a more normal voice, “I don’t hang out here. I do, as Jason said, periodically check on the places the younger lupi like to hang out, and Del Cielo was popular with them for a few years.”

“Why? I mean, the chief of police wants to hurt them, the founder of Humans First lives here, and…oh. You mean that’s why. The thrill of danger. Defying authority.”