Mortal Ties wotl-9 Read online

  “I dealt straight with you. Once I saw what they were doing, I dealt straight with you.”

  True. He’d risked his life to rescue twenty-two homeless people, then given it to save a friend. And after he died, he’d found the death-magic amulet so they could destroy it.

  But first he’d betrayed the Bureau, nearly killed Lily’s boss, conspired in the murder of a U.S. senator, and damn near ended Lily’s career along the way.

  Lily studied him a moment, then took out her phone.

  He frowned. “Who are you calling?”

  “A friend. She hears dead people all the time.” Lily had only chatted with one dead guy. This one. As for the big, fat “why” of this screwed-up situation…well, the expert she was about to consult used the analogy of a house. Most people didn’t see or hear the dead because their houses lacked windows and had only one door—a tightly locked, one-way affair. That door didn’t open until the person died. Because Lily had died once, her door didn’t lock anymore. It was a tiny bit ajar. Mostly that didn’t matter, but she’d been present at Drummond’s death, and somehow that had allowed their energies to get tangled up together.

  At least that was the theory. It didn’t explain everything. Lily had been present when a lot of people died that day, including the man she’d shot. None of the rest of them had taken to tagging along with her.

  She scrolled down to “Etorri” in her contacts list and selected “Rhej.”

  The Rhejes were the clans’ wise women, or maybe historians or quasi-priestesses. They were all Gifted…and the Etorri Rhej’s Gift was mediumship. Lily had never heard the woman’s name because the Rhejes weren’t called by their names, but last month she’d given in to curiosity. Rhejes didn’t actually hide their names and Lily had the woman’s phone number, so it hadn’t been hard. The name of the Etorri Rhej was Anne. Anne Murdock.

  Anne answered right away. Lily apologized for disturbing her, then said, “He’s back.”

  “That ghost?” Anne was clearly surprised. “What was his name—Hammond?”

  “Drummond. He just showed up again. He’s glaring at me right now.”

  “He still seems coherent?”

  “In the sense you used the word, yeah.”

  Anne made a little huff of frustration. “I wish I could talk to him. I haven’t met a fully coherent ghost since I was seven, and she left soon after my mother spoke with her.”

  Lily knew what Anne meant by “coherent,” because they’d talked soon after Drummond showed up. Most ghosts were more of a habit than a person—some ingrained action or fear or moment that played itself out over and over, a ripple cast by the soul’s departure rather than the soul itself. Others seemed like real people, able to interact, but in a limited way. They often didn’t make a lot of sense to those few of the living who could see and hear them.

  But there were a few rare exceptions. Fully coherent ghosts, the Etorri Rhej called them, and the experts didn’t agree on what they were, how they came to be, or much of anything else, except that they were different from the rest. A coherent ghost seemed to be the whole person. He or she remained aware of the living world, seemed to perceive it through the same senses as the living, and used language the way the living do. Coherent ghosts were like the rest in one way, however. They were tied to something—a place or an object or, very rarely, a person.

  How had Lily gotten so lucky? “He says he’s tied to me, but he was gone for over a month.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t explain that.”

  “Neither could he. He also says he thinks he’s supposed to be my partner.”

  “Are you asking for advice?”

  “Is there any way to sort the good ghosts from the rotten, lying sons of bitches?”

  Anne chuckled. “Only the same ways we sort the living. If you want to know if he’s lying, that’s certainly possible. He could equally well be telling the truth, or the truth as he understands it. We may not know much about coherent ghosts, but we’ve no reason to think they’re any less muddled than the rest of us.”

  Lily hesitated over her next question—but dammit, she wanted to know. “So could he, uh, think he needs to help me out because of unfinished business? And once he does, he can…go on?”

  “I don’t buy the ‘unfinished business’ explanation for ghosts in general. Almost everyone leaves some kind of unfinished business behind, but hardly anyone lingers as a ghost more than a few moments. However, some of the more coherent ghosts strongly believe they can’t cross over. Either they’re right, or the strength of their belief itself holds them here.”

  “So Drummond might be supposed to work with me, and he can’t, ah…cross over until he does that. Or pays a debt or something. Or he might be stuck here because he believes he’s stuck here.”

  “Pretty much, yes. I’m not much help, am I?”

  Not really. “One more question, and this may be outside your area of expertise, being more a matter of…ethics, I guess. Does this obligation thing go both ways? Does Drummond being tied to me give me any sort of obligation to him?”

  Anne was quiet for a long moment. “I can only tell you what my mother told me, which is what her mother told her, and on back for generations. We have no more duty to the dead than we do to the living. And no less.”

  That was not what Lily wanted to hear. She thanked the Rhej anyway, disconnected, and looked at the man—or what remained of a man—scowling at her.

  “Well?” he demanded. “Did your friend tell you anything useful?”

  “Maybe.” Making Drummond go away for good was high on her priority list. If he thought he had to help her out in some way…but she hadn’t exactly gotten a guarantee about that. “You were at the courthouse, you said. You know what Brian Nelson did.”

  “Yeah.” He scowled. “Goddamn copycats.”

  That echo of her own thoughts creeped her out. “That’s right. He and three of his gang wanted to raise death magic, so they captured two young women and slit their throats. They’d heard about what your pal Chittenden did. They were copying him.”

  His expression shut down. “You want me to tell you I was wrong?”

  “Oh, I figure you know now that you were on the wrong side. What I want to hear is that you’ve changed your mind about magic and the people who use it.”

  He was silent.

  “That’s what I thought.” She started walking again.

  “Okay, so we won’t be partners. I’m still a resource, and you’re wasting me. I’ve got twice your experience. You can’t ignore that.”

  He was right. That, too, was annoying. She stopped and looked at him. “Mostly you haven’t hung around long enough to be much use. You pop in; you pop out.”

  “I…can be more available now.”

  She waited. He didn’t elaborate, so she asked, “Is the ‘why’ to that one of those things you can’t explain?”

  “Since I don’t understand it myself, the answer would be yes.”

  “You told me you never met Friar.” Robert Friar, who’d started a war—or was resuming one begun over three thousand years ago. Robert Friar, who’d seen the slaughter of hundreds of people on his own side as a great way to take down the lupi, the Gifted, and everyone else who stood in the way of the one he served. Like the U.S. government.

  “Just his buddy, Chittenden.”

  “But you researched him. If you dug into my background, you must have checked him out, too, before throwing in on his side.”

  “Sure, but I doubt I know anything you don’t. I used the Bureau’s files, talked to a couple people.”

  “I’m asking for your professional opinion, not the details of your background check. Given what you learned then and what you know now, would you say he’s a sociopath?”

  “Huh.” He thought that over, frowning and silent for a long moment. “Could be. There’s no record of the usual markers, like torturing baby bunnies when he was a cute little toddler. But sociopaths aren’t identical. Could be he’s what they c
all high functioning.”

  “Really good at hiding what he is, you mean.”

  “That, yeah, but also with better impulse control. Most sociopaths aren’t good at restraining themselves.”

  “Most of the ones we know about. The ones who get locked up.”

  “True.” He cocked his head. “You’re trying to get to know Friar better.”

  She nodded and started walking again, but slowly. “Him and the one he serves.” The Old One who wanted to take over the world and remake it according to her standards. The one they never named, because that could draw her attention. The Great Bitch had to act through local agents because she was barred from their realm, thank God. Or thank the Old Ones who’d opposed her, like the lupi’s Lady, who’d shut the door on themselves in order to lock her out.

  “That’s why you came here.” Drummond sounded pleased, like he’d turned a puzzle piece around and finally saw where it fit. “Not to poke around in your own psyche, but to try and dig into hers. Helen Whitehead’s. Whitehead belonged to that Old One you told me about.”

  “She did. And she seems to have been a sociopath, too.”

  Drummond’s eyebrows lifted. “Yeah?”

  “As was, possibly, one Patrick Harlowe…the other agent of hers that I know about.”

  “That doesn’t say good things about the Old Bitch.”

  “It doesn’t, does it? If—” A muffled gong sounded in her purse—the ringtone for calls forwarded from her official number. She dug out her phone. “Agent Yu here.”

  It was T.J., aka Detective Thomas James, the man who’d trained Lily when she was a shiny new homicide cop. As he talked, Lily gave her watch one wistful glance. She owed T.J. a lot more than one delayed supper, though, so she spoke briskly enough when he paused. “Sure. I’ll be there in fifteen.” She put her phone away and glanced over her shoulder at Scott ten feet behind her. “Did you hear?”

  “Only your side, and that your caller was male.”

  Had Scott been a bit closer he’d heave heard T.J. just fine, but there were limits even to lupi hearing. She was gradually learning what those limits were. “An old buddy of mine from Homicide has a suspicious death. He wants me to see if magic was involved, but off the books. Unofficial.” Lily was a touch sensitive, able to feel magic tactilely, often able to identify what type it was—and unable to work it or be affected by it. If there was any magic on the body or the scene, she’d know. “I’ll be heading to 1221 Hammer, apartment 717.”

  She texted Rule on her way out of the cemetery, letting him know she’d be late. Mike passed her before she reached the gate, moving at the lupi version of an easy lope—about as fast as she could sprint, in other words. And, to her annoyance, a filmy white shape drifted right along with her. When she reached her car, it solidified. Sort of.

  “Sounds like we’ve got a case,” Drummond said.

  “One of us might.” She unlocked the car and climbed in.

  “Dammit, I can help.”

  “Or you can trip me and laugh when I fall down.”

  His features grew even more sour than usual. “I’ll be around when you change your mind. Uh…I can’t manifest at Clanhome unless you call me.”

  Manifest. That was a word she never would have heard from Drummond when he was alive. “You can’t do it there?”

  “No. It’s like…” His fingers opened and closed as if he were scratching at the air. “That’s closed to me, is all. Unless you call. Wherever you are, if you call me, I can manifest.”

  “Huh.” Nokolai Clanhome was where she and Rule were living these days. As were a lot of others.

  Rule’s people had always lived under threat, but they’d felt that their children were safe. Even during times of fierce persecution, lupi children had lived unmolested among humans who might have tossed them onto the fires along with the witches, had they known what they were. And the clans might fight among themselves, but kids were exempt. In all the years that Leidolf and Nokolai had been enemies, neither clan had worried that the other would strike at their children. Even mean, mad old Victor Frey, the Leidolf Rho who’d tricked Rule into assuming the mantle, then died before he could take it back, had left Toby alone.

  Though the latter, Lily suspected, might be because Victor had known his history. Four hundred years ago, Leidolf and Nokolai had acted in rare and complete accord, along with Wythe. They’d acted with the explicit backing of every other clan…every clan but one. Bánach clan had been feuding with Cynyr. Bánach clan took the eight-year-old son of Cynyr’s Rho hostage—took him unharmed, but refused to release the boy until Cynyr submitted.

  Bánach clan no longer existed.

  Victor Frey had been vicious and maybe crazy toward the end of his life, but he had been Rho. No hatred, however fostered and festered, was as important as the survival of his clan. Toby had lived in North Carolina the first eight years of his life, deep in Leidolf’s territory. Victor had left Toby alone.

  Robert Friar wouldn’t hesitate to take children. He wouldn’t hesitate to kill them. There had been kids at those Humans First rallies. That none had been killed was a matter of luck—luck and the furious defense of the lupi the Humans Firsters wanted gelded, imprisoned, or dead.

  And so, in addition to bringing in extra fighters, Nokolai had gathered as many of its children as it could into Clanhome—children, and sometimes their mothers, and as many of their female clan as would come, too. Isen had also opened Clanhome to the children of their two subordinate clans in North America—Laban and Vochi, both of whom lacked the resources to house and defend all of their children at their own Clanhomes, though for opposite reasons.

  “Is that why you haven’t pestered me this past month?” Lily asked. “Because I’ve been living at Clanhome, and you can’t manifest there?”

  “No.” He shrugged stiffly. “There’s stuff I don’t understand about this being dead business, but that’s not why I was gone. I can manifest some places easier than others, but I can do it pretty much anywhere if you call me.”

  She needed to go. Still she paused, looking at the ghost of a man who’d been her enemy and was now determined to be her partner. Or whatever. “Tell me something.”

  He looked wary. “If I can.”

  “You killed that woman, or arranged her death somehow. The one with the Fire Gift. The one who killed your wife.”

  His face didn’t change, but for a long moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Finally he spoke, his voice entirely level. “I did.”

  “Did you enjoy it?”

  The pause was even longer this time, and his voice was different. Husky. “Oh, yeah. I fucking loved it.”

  THREE

  BEING dead sucked.

  He hated it when she went in a car. You’d think the plane trip back here from D.C. would’ve been worse, but somehow a plane—at least a big one like the 757 she’d flown in—established its own space, a locus he could hang onto. He’d been able to hold together okay in the plane.

  But cars were a bitch. Al Drummond sailed along behind the white Ford like he’d been tied to the bumper. He didn’t have to work at it. That wasn’t the problem. All he had to do was relax, and she pulled him with her.

  He didn’t feel the wind, the pressure of air zooming past, shoving at his hair and face and skin, making his eyes stream. That would’ve been fine. That would’ve been great, but he never felt the air anymore. It was the sheer speed that tattered him, made him into something that didn’t feel, didn’t have eyes to stream, didn’t have ears to hear or any goddamn way to experience the world. Most of the time he felt like he had a body, even if it wasn’t the same kind he’d had before he died. But not when Yu went zooming around in a damn car.

  You were gone for over a month…

  He’d lied to her. That didn’t bother him. He was a good liar. It wasn’t enough to just smooth your face out to official blankness. Any moron could learn to do that, but a good cop learned to lie, too. But it had been luck, not skill, that made
this particular lie work. He’d been shook up enough for it to show, so she’d put his hesitation down to that.

  And if she hadn’t, so what? He wasn’t going to tell her where he’d been.

  Yu was right, damn her. He’d thrown in on the wrong side.

  Twenty-seven years of law enforcement. Twenty-seven years of stakeouts, bad food, and the slow, painstaking build of cases some asshole of a defense lawyer couldn’t shred. Plenty of failures along the way, but some triumphs, too. He’d been a good cop.

  And he’d thrown it away. Wiped it out. It didn’t take a genius to spot the when and why. The job had reached out in the person of Martha Billings and killed Sarah. He’d reached back to return the favor. Most people would say that’s where he stepped wrong, where he made the decision that destroyed him. He didn’t agree. It hadn’t felt like a choice, like being faced with a decision he could choose or reject. Martha Billings had killed Sarah. Martha Billings would die.

  She had, too. Burned to a crisp. Just like Sarah.

  And Yu wanted to know if he’d enjoyed it. That memory was one bright, hot spot of pleasure in the endless gray his life had become the moment he learned Sarah was gone.

  No, killing Billings wasn’t where he’d taken a horribly wrong turn. Maybe that had been wrong, but only in the unstoppable way that cancer is wrong. Staying on the job after he killed her, though, hiding what he’d done—that’s what twisted him. He should’ve done what he had to do and turned himself in. At the time, he’d thought that getting himself thrown in prison would’ve handed Billings a postmortem victory. At the time, he’d felt that stopping Billings wasn’t enough. He had to stop everyone like her, too.

  At the time, he’d been bumfuck crazy. Which was why he hadn’t noticed the other reason he stayed on the job. So he could piss on it.

  The job had killed Sarah, and he’d wanted revenge on it, too. Only he hadn’t known that’s what he was doing, not until a month or so after he died, when he’d done what he’d told Yu was impossible. He left.

  Getting himself fully, properly dead turned out to be harder than he’d thought.