you lack—a deficit I will partly make up tonight—but what the Rhos told me played a part. Their Lady’s instruction was that they ally themselves with me. There was no compulsion that I offer alliance in return, but I needed to understand what it meant if I did so. Also, they provided a good deal of information about our common enemy. I realized that to go up against an Old One—even one unable to act directly in our realm—required assets and information only the government possesses.”
“You consulted with the Rhos.” Slowly she looked at Rule. “All of them?”
Rule spoke. “He consulted with me, yes.”
“You’ve known about this—this Shadow Unit. For maybe a month, you’ve known. And didn’t tell me. You made sure I didn’t know.”
“Because we knew you would react precisely as you have—with anger, a sense of betrayal, and the burning desire to arrest people.”
Something was burning, all right. Her eyes were part of that heat. She couldn’t look at him right now. She could not. She didn’t want to look at Ruben, either, so she stared at her lap, fighting to get control.
“Lily,” Fagin said gently, “consider the possibility that you’re wrong. You know us. Me only slightly, I suppose, but you know Ruben fairly well. You certainly know Rule. Would they take this step if they weren’t convinced it was absolutely necessary?”
Her hands clenched. He was too old to punch, but God, she wanted to hit someone. “Consider the possibility,” she said through gritted teeth, “that a group of people who operate outside the law is going to abuse that. They won’t mean to. They’ll tell themselves they’re only doing what they have to do, but that’s just another version of the ends justifying the means. Sooner or later—especially when the stakes are so high—they’ll be hurting people to protect themselves, because if they get exposed, why, that’s going to strengthen the enemy, isn’t it?”
Now she looked up, right into Ruben’s eyes. “Power without accountability corrupts. Every damn time.”
He looked tired. “Do you think I haven’t considered this? Law enforcement in this country is designed to operate openly. We hold power over people’s lives. That power must be tempered by accountability. By establishing a shadow organization, I eliminate that accountability, making abuse more likely. It’s my hope that there won’t be time for corruption to set in.”
“If you think you can stop her in a month or two—”
“A month or two. Interesting that you chose that interval. Without the Shadow Unit, the United States has approximately two months left before it collapses.”
He stopped there. Rule didn’t speak. Neither did Fagin. Lily sat motionless, her mind skittering away from his words while her stomach clutched up tight, as if it could tie a knot in the silence, hold on to it, so she didn’t have to hear . . .
It didn’t work. She had to ask. “All right. All right. Tell me.” “The third thing that happened to change my mind was a series of visions.”
Ruben’s Gift meant he had the best hunches ever. He knew, without knowing why, that he needed to take a certain action, or avoid an action. He’d proved his accuracy time after time. But he didn’t normally see the future. She knew of one occasion when he had, though. When a three- or four-thousand-year-old being who could not die was about to manifest herself and her power fully on Earth, dragging California and God only knew how much of the nation into chaos and nightmare.
Because of those visions, he’d been willing to hold back, to trust Lily, even when she couldn’t tell him anything. Because he trusted her and his own hunches, in the end he’d exerted his authority in the only way that would help.
Now he wanted her to trust him—and his visions.
“Without the Shadow Unit,” Ruben said quietly, “in approximately two months, perhaps one-third of the Gifted in the country will be dead. The Unit will be gone, its people dead or imprisoned or in hiding. The president and possibly the vice president will be dead. The nation will be in a panic, with mobs killing anyone suspected of magic. Some Gifted will strike back, killing large numbers of civilians and police alike. In one scenario, the surviving lupi retreat to Canada. In another, they pull back to their clanhomes, but after the military coup—”
“The what!?”
“I’ve seen five detailed scenarios. One of them results in an enormous physical cataclysm on the West Coast, the nature of which is unclear. Four of