The best and weirdest change was the sudden cessation of argument. The clans weren’t bickering with each other. They’d stopped distrusting Nokolai and were grimly determined to hold the All-Clan some of them had been resisting for nearly a year. The Lady had told them to, after all. She’d spoken through the Rhejes, saying they were to come when “the two-mantled one calls”—and the lupi did not argue with their Lady. Ever. But the logistics and expense of assembling almost every lupus in the world in one place meant it couldn’t happen overnight.
Every lupus in the world . . . Lily was beginning to feel uneasy about that. Wasn’t holding an All-Clan a lot like issuing their enemies an irresistible invitation? “Here we are—come slaughter us.” Last year, after they defeated Harlow and the Azá, an All-Clan hadn’t been so much of a risk. The Great Bitch hadn’t had agents who were ready to act. Now, though . . . now there was Friar and Humans First.
Of course, Robert Friar was supposed to be dead. Lily didn’t buy it, but even if she was wrong, the organization he’d founded was very much alive and thriving. Their membership had jumped when Friar’s death was reported—according to Humans First, he’d been martyred, killed by foul magic. Never mind that it was magic he’d brought in himself—that was government lies. Most of those members weren’t likely to grab a gun and go lupus hunting, but some were hard-core.
She’d told Rule about her misgivings. He’d agreed . . . and said they had to hold the All-Clan anyway. There was something in the stories about it. Something the Lady had said three thousand years ago meant they had to have an All-Clan.
Lily did not understand.
Other changes were less boggling and more annoying. The basement of the row house was unfinished; a construction crew from Leidolf would arrive to finish it in a couple of weeks. They had guards now, ten of them, and Rule wanted those guards housed here, not at a hotel. He’d added an alarm system to the detached garage out back, and he wanted Lily’s government-issue Ford in that garage. If she didn’t want to park there, fine, he wasn’t telling her what to do—but the garage would stay empty, because he wasn’t going to use it. He’d rented space in a parking garage a few blocks away—the one where he kept a couple of vehicles for the guards’ use. When Rule needed his car, he had one of the guards retrieve it. Since they were lupus, they’d smell it if anyone had tried to tamper with the car.
This focus on security was as necessary as it was unwelcome. But Lily’s car was in the garage and Rule’s Mercedes wasn’t, so they left by the front door, watched over invisibly by José on the roof. Out back, she knew, Craig paced the perimeter of the small yard on four feet.
One up, watching the street; one down, watching the rear of the house; one with Rule. The Leidolf guards were blended with those from Nokolai now. At first they’d worked separate shifts, divided by clan, but Rule had recently changed that. They needed to work as a team, he said . . . which made sense, but Lily had expected it to cause problems, at least at first.
When she’d said something about that to Rule, his eyebrows had lifted. “A month ago, it might have. War changes things.” He’d been right. The Leidolf and Nokolai guards were working together as smoothly as if their clans hadn’t been enemies for a few hundred years.
“What did your ghost look like?” Rule asked as she locked the door. He stood with his back to her, scanning the street.
“Not my ghost.” She dropped her keys in her purse and started for the car double-parked in front of the row house.
“The ghost that isn’t yours, then.”
“Five-ten, one sixty . . . or what might be one sixty if it had an actual body instead of the ectoplasmic suggestion of one. No distinguishing features. No features at all.”
Rule’s eyebrows lifted as he opened the car door for her. He was big on opening doors. “A faceless specter?”
She grinned. “In fact, it was.” She slid inside and scooted over.
He followed. Scott clicked the locks.
This was the part Rule disliked most about the tightened security, she knew. He preferred to drive himself—but he also preferred to have