white or yellow phosphorus—that’s the garlic smell—mixed with benzene, water, and a bit of rubber into a glass bottle. Benzene smells sweet, see? Like your lupus reported. You throw your bottle at a hard surface. It breaks, the ingredients ignite, and you get a quick, hot fire, caustic smoke, and fumes from phosphorous pentoxide and sulfur dioxide. Sulfur dioxide—that and phosphorus make a burned match smell, and it’s also a key ingredient in smog. It all fits. So here’s what we’ll do.”
Uddley went on to give her a quick précis of what she would do in the first hour and what would come later, if she had more time. He assured her he could stay on the phone with her all day, if necessary—“No need to rush on my account! It’s all billable hours!” They’d keep the line open, but she’d need both hands to work the scene, so she put her phone on speaker and clipped it to her waistband.
Thirty-eight minutes later she’d taken dozens of pictures, completed a rough sketch, and had begun collecting trace evidence. She’d scraped burned crud from walls and floor, carefully marking each Baggie with the precise location, and sticking each location with a bit of masking tape, then taking a picture of the marked location. She’d also taken into evidence one larger item—a big chunk from a concrete block. Probably the first projectile.
Now it was time to collect glass. Unfortunately, there was glass everywhere from the window. What they wanted was glass that might have come from a bottle filled with phosphorus, benzene, and a bit of rubber.
Time for less conventional means. Lily straightened. Her right arm, the weak one, was aching. She’d been leaning on it a lot. Absently she rubbed it. “Scott? I’m ready for you to Change.”
A tinny voice came from near her waist. “I’d like to brief him myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure. Hold on a minute, Scott,” she said, heading for the door to the kitchen. She reached for her phone with her left hand and unclipped it.
And dropped it when her hand tingled, then turned numb and useless.
TWENTY-TWO
“YOU should’ve told him,” Scott said.
They were in Rule’s car, headed for Bethesda. Scott was driving, of course. Lily had turned the heater on. The sun was down and the temperature kept dropping. Surely it was too early in the year for snow? She hoped so. She hadn’t brought a heavy coat with her.
Rule was in the ambulance with Cullen. Her mate-sense told her they were still in motion, so they hadn’t reached the hospital yet. But they’d get there well ahead of her and Scott, having left first. Before Lily could wade through the surging sea of reporters to the car, she’d needed to hand off evidence and get a bandage on her arm so it didn’t bleed onto her jacket.
Sherry had been right about the type of offering the elemental would require. The cut was small and tidy, on the inside of her elbow . . . her left elbow. That hand was working again. Not quite normally, but headed there. “I’m going to tell him. I want privacy for it.”
She hadn’t had that at Fagin’s place. Once the elemental agreed to release them, things had moved quickly. They’d had a brief window of time to seal the deal with blood, then scramble or be passed over the earthen wall. Then they’d been surrounded by cops of both local and federal flavors, with the press just the other side of the barricades.
“When are you going to tell him?”
“At the hospital, probably. You don’t argue like this with Rule.”
“You’re not my Rho. And I do get to argue with Rule if I think it’s important. Not during, but afterward.”
She sighed and shoved back her hair with her left hand. Those fingers still felt thick and clumsy, but she felt them. She could use them.
No pain bolt this time. Just a hand that forgot it was part of her body, or a brain that forgot how to talk to the hand. The paralysis hadn’t lasted long, but for a few minutes Lily had been scared shitless. She’d had Scott find her some coffee—old stuff that he’d heated up in the microwave. Maybe it had helped.
Lily let her hand drop to her lap. She closed the fingers in a loose fist. Opened them. Closed them. “Thank you for giving me time to tell him myself. I am going to. I’m not quite stupid enough to think I could keep this from