Mortal Sins

THIRTY-FIVE

LILY was certain Alicia had snatched Toby. Rule didn’t believe it. Alicia had concocted a crazy plan, true, but she wasn’t a lawbreaker by nature. She wasn’t a woman who would throw away her entire life in order to steal her son from the father she’d agreed, after all these years, could have him.

And it didn’t matter which of them was right, not immediately. Lily had done what was needed. She’d gotten Deacon to put out an APB for Alicia’s car—having memorized the make, model, and even the license tags. Rule wanted to kiss her for that.

Probably, he told himself, Alicia’s car had broken down and she’d left her phone somewhere, or forgotten to charge it. That happened. She’d feel foolish when some officer saw the car and pulled over, but she’d get the help she needed.

There was no reason to panic.

“I’VE got to go,” Lily said, holding both of Rule’s hands in hers.

They were at Louise’s house. He’d had to come here, of course, to be with Louise . . . to be here when Toby and Alicia arrived. But Lily couldn’t stay. He understood that. Finding the wraith’s creator had to be her priority. “Of course. I’ll call you when Toby turns up.”

She thought he was deluding himself. He saw that clearly in her face, however cop-blank she made it.

“Alicia wouldn’t kidnap him,” he said again. “I don’t know what’s wrong, but she wouldn’t do that. Her career means too much. Her new husband matters, too. She’s not the type to go on the run.”

Louise came in. “Of course not. I just can’t understand where she is.” Her voice was calm, but her eyes were frightened.

Lily squeezed Rule’s hand, then let go and went to Louise. “There haven’t been any auto accidents that could have involved her. Sheriff Deacon checked for us.”

“I know. I’m just being a mother and worrying.” Her smile wobbled. “Goes with the territory.”

The doorbell rang. Louise rushed to answer, with Rule and Lily right behind. Though why would Alicia and Toby ring the bell? Surely Toby had a key, even if Alicia didn’t.

And he didn’t hear Toby. There were undoubtedly moments when Toby didn’t chatter, but coming back from an outing with his mother . . .

Of course Louise flung open the door without checking first. “Oh. Oh, come in.”

The disappointment in her voice stopped Rule cold. He closed his eyes. He would not panic.

“Cynna’s flying out,” Cullen said briskly. “She managed to snag a seat on the same flight as Nettie, in fact. With the time difference, that has her getting into Charlotte about midnight.”

Rule opened his eyes and saw his friend in front of him, holding his ratty backpack by one strap. “Cynna’s coming.”

“Yep. I’ve got a couple of Find spells, and I’ll try them, but they’re nothing compared to what she can do.” He grinned. “I admit it even when she isn’t here, ready to thunk me.”

Midnight. Rule wanted to believe Cynna wouldn’t be needed. Surely they’d find Toby long before midnight. But if they didn’t . . . if they didn’t, Cynna would. She was the best, quite literally the best, at what she did. So good she’d been involuntarily recruited by agents of another realm for a while.

She was also about five months pregnant. It should have been seven months, but the time she’d spent in Edge had passed differently from here on Earth.

Rule swallowed. “Thank you.”

Lily glanced at Cullen and got a nod. “I’m off,” she said.

“I’ll keep reading,” he assured her.

Rule frowned. “Wait a minute. Cullen, Lily will need you. You’re going with her.”

“No, I’m not.”

“I do not need a babysitter.”

“Shut up, Rule,” Cullen said gently. “I’m not much help, I know, but you’re stuck with me.”

Lily put it another way. She came up to him, kissed his cheek, and said, “Not a babysitter. A friend. He wouldn’t be much help for me anyway, not until he figures out how to stop a wraith.”

“Like I said”—Cullen jiggled his backpack—“I’ll keep reading.”

Lily reached for the door—and Rule spun the other way. He’d heard the back gate—and now footsteps in the yard. Running. Someone light or small. Child-size. He was at the back door by the time a small fist started pounding on it.

He jerked it open. “Talia!”

The girl turned a frantic, teary face up toward him. “She’s got Toby! The bad one, the one who made th-the wraith. The Baron told me.”

Lily came up behind him. “The Baron?”

She nodded jerkily. “Yes, h-he’s not a ghost. Well, he sorta is, only he’s different, and he understands things here more than ghosts usually do, and he’s really clear, not wispy at all. But only part of what he said made sense.”

“What did he look like, Talia?” Cullen asked.

“Tall, with a funny black hat and black clothes. His skin was real dark, darker than mine, but his face was white. Truly white, not just pale. Sometimes,” she said, her voice dropping, “it was almost like there was just a skull, not a face at all. That was scary.”

“That’s the Baron, all right.”

“Come in.” Rule moved aside and, as soon as she’d entered, went down on one knee in front of her. “What did he say, Talia?”

She scrunched up her face. “This is what I’m supposed to tell you. She’s got Toby. He said you knew who she was, that she made the wraith. She’s gonna do a big spell with Toby, but the Baron said she’s got it all wrong. Th-that’s when his face looked like a skull, and he wasn’t laughing. He looked . . .” She shuddered.

Rule put an arm around her. “We’ll stop her, Talia.”

“Yes! But you have to stop the wraith, too, Mr. Turner,” Talia said, her eyes huge. “You and Agent Yu. He said you have to do it together.”

Lily squeezed Rule’s shoulder. “He give any hint how?”

Talia shook her head, her eyes tearing up. “He wouldn’t answer my questions. I asked, but he laughed like it was all one big joke, and he made me memorize this next part. It doesn’t make sense, but he made me memorize it. It goes like this: ‘It wasn’t midnight, but the performance was lovely and the grave was indeed open. Empty now, but open.’ And he said you owe him some cigars.”

CHARLES Arthur Kessenblaum had died on the day of the Turning. He’d been driving his car when the power wind hit and, like every lupus on the planet, the enormous surge of power had forced him to Change. The car had been traveling at highway speed. He’d been killed almost instantly, with no time to heal the wounds.

His mother’s name was Mandy Ann. Mandy Ann Kessenblaum. If her daughter was, as Lily had said, a hippie wannabe, Mandy Ann was the real thing—a flower child who dropped out and never came back. Though she’d had two children, she’d never married. She lived alone in a one-room log cabin on a few acres and sold some of the organic vegetables she grew at a roadside stand, augmenting that income by cleaning houses and selling handmade quilts.

She didn’t sound evil.

The information about the cabin and Mandy Ann came from Alex and Marcia Farquhar, who’d called Rule and Lily back within minutes of Talia’s delivery of the Baron’s message.

Sheriff Deacon had delivered his message in person. One of his cruisers had found Alicia, unconscious and bloodied, next to her car. It looked like she’d put up a fight, he said. She was being rushed to the hospital.

They’d left Louise to go to the hospital alone—and wait. She had the hardest job, Rule thought.

MANDY Ann’s cabin lay a short distance from the place Rule had found the first bodies—less than three miles, but on the other side of the highway. It was roughly the same distance from the wraith’s grave.

No, from Charley’s grave. He had a name, Rule reminded himself. Whatever he was now, he’d once been lupus and young. So very young. He’d died before being acknowledged as an adult of the clan, before being entered into the mantle.

It took fifteen minutes to reach the spot where they left their cars. An ambulance was following and would park out of sight of the cabin.

Rule was careful not to think about the ambulance.

There was a long dirt road that led to the cabin, but of course they couldn’t take that. So the sheriff led them a roundabout way from the highway.

It was small team Lily had assembled. Most of them were, in Rule’s opinion, superfluous. Deacon was there to get them to the cabin. Brown had tagged along when Deacon came to deliver the news about Alicia, so Lily brought him, too. But they’d stay behind. Getting into the cabin fell to Rule and Cullen.

Since Rule would have gone regardless of what Lily decided, it was fortunate she agreed with him. He could move faster than any human and absorb more damage without being stopped. Marcia Farquhar said Mandy Ann had a shotgun, so that was a factor. And he was trained in stealth by his brother Benedict. He’d be quick and he’d be quiet.

Cullen wasn’t trained, but he was even faster than Rule and almost as quiet. He was also the only one who might be able to deal with whatever spell Mandy Ann was casting or planning to cast.

The others would wait for Rule to give the signal to come in. Lily had wanted to wire him for sound, but it would have taken too long.

He used the short walk from the cars to ready himself. He sank into the physical, aware of his breathing, of the clever flex and shove of his muscles and the strength they held, waiting for the moment he would draw upon them. His heartbeat slowed. Neither fear nor anxiety was real now—only this, the sunshine and heat, the motion, Lily beside him. Though he still used only two feet, he now walked like the wolf.

They stopped in a woody area. He could just glimpse the cabin through the trees. A small field separated the woods from the cabin.

“Be careful,” Lily told him tersely. “Grabbing Toby may be a way of drawing you to her. The wraith seems to have an interest in you.”

That seemed obvious now. “He’s drawn to the mantles.”

“There’s power in them, if he can get it,” she agreed. “Remember that Mandy Ann has at least one gun, and she may have help—or an additional hostage. Crystal hasn’t been seen for days.”

He nodded, collected Cullen with a glance, and set off.

His planned approach was simple enough. There were windows on three of the cabin’s walls; none on the north, where a large stone chimney was the only break in the log wall. On the west side was a chicken coop. They would avoid that. Chickens made a fuss if you came close. Though he couldn’t see it from here, he’d been told there was a diesel-powered generator, the only source of electricity for the cabin.

He and Cullen circled slightly to approach from the north.

Rule paused at the edge of the woods. The field here was grass for about twenty yards, and cultivated closer to the house. The furrows would slow them down, but the soft earth would be quiet beneath their feet if they avoided the plants.

They didn’t know if Mandy Ann had a dog. She used to, according to Marcia Farquhar, but that old hound had died a couple years ago. She might have gotten another one. Dogs were noisy and hard to sneak up on.

Rule inhaled deeply. There was very little breeze, and it blew from the east—little help.

He smelled chickens. Something with tomatoes and spices was cooking nearby. Compost . . . yes, there was her compost pile, neatly penned. And the faint, pervasive scent of human. Someone human walked these woods often. “No dogs,” he murmured to Cullen.

Cullen gave a single nod, a sharp-edged smile.

“You remember the signals?” Rule subvocalized this time.

Cullen nodded.

“Follow at whatever pace is quietest.” And he set off.

The grass was knee-high. No way to move through it in complete silence, but Rule trusted in the poor hearing of humans and eased through it slowly.

Luck smiled on him. Halfway through the grassy area, the diesel generator kicked in, making enough racket to drown out a dozen men rushing the cabin. He broke into a lope.

He’d reached the furrows when the smell hit him. Corruption, faint but unmistakable. His calm faltered—but no, it could not be Toby. Toby had been alive only hours ago.

He was still alive. He had to be.

Then Cullen’s whistle—a single high note—brought his head around. That was the signal for abandoning caution and charging. Rule didn’t know the reason, but he didn’t hesitate. He covered the last twenty feet in an all-out run, racing around the corner of the cabin, where the door—good gods—stood open.

Without hesitation or caution, he dashed inside.

“Stop!”

He did. Partly blinded by the change in light, he still saw enough to freeze.

The woman had long hair worn in braids that reached to her waist. She was short, muscular, chubby. There was a raw scrape or scratch along one of her plump cheeks. She wore a man’s blue work shirt tied at the waist with the sleeves rolled up, and a full skirt in faded tie-dye swirls.

The skirt was spread out around her on a big, pillowy bed covered in a lovely old-fashioned quilt. She held Toby’s limp body propped up against her with one sun-browned arm.

Her other hand held a knife to Toby’s throat. A butcher knife, large and efficient.

But he breathed. After a few seconds, Rule’s eyes adjusted enough to be sure of that. His son’s chest rose and fell steadily.

“Come in,” Mandy Ann said in a high, chirpy voice. “Oh, you already did!” She giggled. “But don’t come any closer. I don’t want to damage my boy’s new body.”

Cullen skidded to a stop beside Rule. “A ward,” he whispered. “There was a damned ward laid right into the earth. I didn’t see it until you crossed it and it flared, and too late then. She’d been warned.”

“Oh, aren’t you the pretty one. Pity I can’t use you.” Mandy Ann shook her head. “But Charley wants the boy. He told me so.”

“What’s wrong with Toby?” Rule did his best to keep the growl out of his voice. He didn’t entirely succeed. “What have you done to my son?”

“Is he your boy? Nothing at all. I gave him a bit of my special tea so he’d sleep. I wouldn’t want to scare the poor boy.”

Rule’s eyes had adjusted fully to the dim light inside the cabin. It was hot in there. He could feel his shirt sticking to his back. All the windows were open to catch what breeze they could, but the curtains were drawn. They barely swayed, listless.

The cabin was one large room, as he’d been told. Mandy Ann and the big, cozy bed occupied a prominent place on the south wall to his left. Opposite her were the living area and kitchen. There was a big wooden table in the kitchen that held an odd-looking piece of equipment. It reminded Rule of the paddles they use on those medical shows on TV when they yell, “Clear!” and try to jolt someone’s heart back to life.

A young woman with red hair and a galaxy of freckles sat at that table—in a manner of speaking. She was tied to one of the chairs. Her head hung limply. Her eyes were open and staring, and a fly crawled idly across one madly freckled cheek.

THE second Lily saw Rule and Cullen take off at that impossible speed, she knew the situation had gone south.

The hell with waiting on permission. Either Rule and Cullen would deal with what they found immediately, or they’d need backup. “Brown, come in from the west, get to the window on that side. Deacon, take the south window. Weapons drawn, but hold your fire unless I give the order, or if you can see there’s immediate danger of casualties. Use your judgment.” She hoped to God they had judgment. “I’m assuming a hostage situation.”

Deacon didn’t argue about jurisdiction or who could give orders to whom. He just unsnapped his holster, withdrawing a nice Glock. Brown drew his .38 from his shoulder holster—an old-fashioned guy, apparently.

“You two good shots?”

“Middlin’, with a handgun,” Deacon said. “Better with a rifle, but it’s a small cabin. At that range I’ll be okay.”

“And I,” Brown said, “am goddamned good. You’re taking the front, then. You going in quiet or loud?”

“Friendly. I’m going in real friendly.”

“I’M going to have to ask you to tie each other up,” Mandy Ann said apologetically. “Oh—you can’t quite do that, can you?” She giggled again. “But you—you’re this one’s dad?—you can tie up your friend. I’m not sure what I’ll do with you, but we’ll start by you tying up your friend. Go on, now.” She shifted, pulling Toby with her as she scooted farther into the middle of the bed. She nodded at the big kitchen table with its three unoccupied chairs. “Sit yourself down next to Crystal.”

“I can’t think of why I’d do that,” Cullen said. Not arguing, exactly. Just making an observation.

“Because I’ll hurt the boy if you don’t, of course. I don’t want to.” She clucked her tongue. “Poor mite. I’d rather not hurt him at all, but I will if I have to. It won’t matter in the end, because once my boy’s in there with him, he’ll heal up whatever I had to do.” Her eyes gleamed merrily. “Keep that in mind, and behave. I can hurt him quite a bit if I have to.”

“I hope you won’t have to,” Lily said from the doorway.

Rule jolted. He hadn’t known she was there.

“Another one of you?” Mandy Ann’s eyes opened wide in amazement. “My, my. At least I know who’s going to tie up the big one, here. And I do have four chairs, don’t I?” She giggled.

That giggle was getting to Rule. Or maybe it was the corpse of the woman’s daughter, held upright by the ropes around her.

“What’s the plan, Mandy Ann?” Lily asked coolly. “How is this helping Charley?”

“You know about Charley? I guess you must, or you wouldn’t be here.” She cocked her head, smiling at Rule. “You mustn’t worry about your boy. He may not like it at first, but all children have to learn to share.”

“You want to put your dead son into my living son,” he said. “I’d call that hurting him.”

“Charley’s not dead.” For the first time the merriness slipped, letting out something barbed and frightened and quite mad. “And it won’t hurt, not a bit. Just ask Crystal. I thought he could use her, you see,” she confided. “But she’s so selfish. She didn’t want to share. It wasn’t wasted, though, all the time I spent learning how much current to use. Now I can do it right.”

The apparatus on the table that looked like an electrical paddle . . . That’s what it was. That’s why she’d started the generator, Rule realized with sick horror. But she didn’t want to start a heart with it. She meant to stop one.

Toby’s.

Lily said, “Mandy Ann, we can’t ask Crystal anything. We aren’t mediums, and Crystal is dead.”

“Don’t be silly.” But her hand tightened on the knife. “She’s sulking. She didn’t like it when I . . . when I . . . But I saved him. I saved my Charley. I didn’t understand at first . . .” Confusion clouded her eyes. “I did the spell right, but it didn’t tell me I had to find him a body. I thought he did that on his own. But he told me.” She straightened, giving a satisfied nod. “He told me he needs the boy. A lupus boy.”

“Did he?” Lily asked softly. “I don’t think he can talk to you, Mandy Ann. If he were a ghost, he could. But he isn’t exactly a ghost, is he?”

“Of course not. He’s not dead.”

“He talked to me.”

That got her attention. “When? What did he say?”

“When he possessed me, I could hear him. I could feel some of what he feels. He’s suffering terribly, Mandy Ann. He’s so very cold.”

“He is not suffering!” The chirpy voice turned shrill. “You’re lying. He didn’t talk to you at all.”

“Is he here? I bet you can see him, even if you can’t hear him very well. If he’s here, I could let him into me again, and he could tell you himself.”

“Lily—” Rule started to move, maybe to shake some sense into her. Mandy Ann jerked when he did, and a thin trickle of blood started down Toby’s throat.

“Now look what you made me do.” She sounded like she’d accidentally dropped an egg on the floor. “You all get over there now. Over to the table. Scoot, scoot.”

“All right,” Lily said easily, and started moving—and as she passed Rule she subvocalized quite audibly, “Sharpshooters at windows. Leave a clear field.”

Rule followed her, but kept it slow. Cullen matched his pace. The more Mandy Ann had to work to keep track of all of them, the better. As long as they seemed to be obeying, she wouldn’t hurt Toby.

Please, Lady, don’t let her hurt Toby.

“I asked you before, Mandy Ann,” Lily said as she arrived at the table—took a quick look at Crystal, and jerked her gaze away. “What’s your plan? Charley can’t get into anyone who hasn’t been technically dead at some point.”

“That’s what the paddles are for, of course. That’s why I gave the boy some of my tea. That part isn’t very pleasant, and I don’t want him to suffer. But he’ll be fine. His heart only needs to stop for such a little while.”

“That’s what I thought.” Lily glanced around casually—taking note of where Rule and Cullen were, Rule thought. And said, quite offhandedly, “If you have a clear shot, take it.”

The explosion of sound as the gun went off rattled the plates on the shelves.

The woman sitting on the bed jolted as if startled by the noise—and slumped, her lax hand releasing the knife as she sank onto the big, cozy bed, her eyes as open and staring as her daughter’s.

Before his ears stopped ringing, Rule had snatched Toby off the bed with its old-fashioned quilt, now spattered with blood and brains. He held his sleeping son close and rocked him, rocked him.

Lily came to him and curled her hand around his arm, but her eyes were on the bed. She sighed. “You’re right, Brown,” she said to the man climbing in the window. “You’re a goddamned good shot.”