Like when Steve took up with Mariah?

“Yeah. I mean, Adele really was cool with the sex part, she wasn’t fooling about that, but Steve wanted more than a variety of bodies. Mariah was special to him, and Adele could see that. Shit, we all could. Adele still said the right things, but there was a strain, you know?”

Lily was pretty sure she did know. “You said you’re more interested in the magical exploration bit. What kind of exploring did Adele do?”

The grin was just as white this time, but more sheepish. “I didn’t mean that I was, like, immune to the sex. At first I liked that part, too, but after a while…I thought it would be more like clan.”

“It wasn’t?”

“First time I turned someone down, I saw the difference! Man.” He shook his head. “Adele says some of the same stuff clan does, but she gets it wrong.”

“How do you mean?”

“You know how the fundamental thing is that everyone owns their own sexuality? Everyone, all the time, no exceptions once you’re adult. So if a guy is turned on by other guys, that’s okay, or if you want to take a vow of chastity, that’s cool, too. Hard to understand, maybe.” A quick grin. “But okay. You don’t get to think you know what’s best for someone else, because it’s their sexuality, right? And it’s just as okay to say no as it is to say yes.”

“Adele doesn’t agree?”

“She says the thing is to be kind to each other—well, that’s what Mom says, too, but she doesn’t mean it the same way. Adele thinks the only kind, healthy answer is yes. If you turn someone down, there’s something wrong with you.” Another head shake. “I think it’s a control thing with her. I tried to tell Steve that once, that she’s using sex for control, but he didn’t see it. But she never pulls that control shit with them. With the lupi, I mean. Not anymore.”

“Not anymore?”

“I wasn’t part of the group when Rule came in and pulled the plug a few years back, but I heard about it. He didn’t try to tell the older lupi like Steve what to do, but he had a word with the young ones, and pfft! They were gone, just like that, and they didn’t come back. Shook Adele up, I think.” His smile was sly. “I know it pissed her off.”

“If you aren’t happy with Adele’s sexual philosophy or her efforts to control the group, why stay with it?”

He sighed. “You read me, right? I’ve got a little bit of a Gift, nothing special. But that’s what rocks me, studying magic. I like working on cars, too, but they’re second. If I could make a living with spells…but, shit, even if there was a job like that, I don’t have the power.”

“Adele’s willing to teach you.”

“Yeah. Not many are, not when I’ll never be a powerhouse, and I get that. The ones with big-ass Gifts need help getting them under control, and they can do more with what they’re taught than I could.”

“I’ve always thought desire has as much to do with where we end up as raw talent. Stubbornness counts, too. Did Adele teach you any, ah, runic spells? The kind with patterns, drawings?”

He lit up. “No, those are more my thing. She’s into charms and potions, but potions are really hard to get right—the results can be unpredictable, you know? And charms take power. Me, I get off on the drawn spells. Lots of spells have a drawn or written component, but putting one all in symbols, that’s rare. I’ve been working on how to convert other kinds of spells to runic.”

“Maybe she’s asked you to convert a spell that way sometimes.”

“Yeah, she has. I’m pretty good at it.” He might have been trying to look modest. It looked more like delight. “She asked me to help her with one a couple weeks ago. Well, she didn’t show me the whole spell, just part of it she was having trouble with. She said I wasn’t ready for the whole thing, but I think she just likes being mysterious, making like she knows everything.”

In that moment, Lily truly hated Adele Blanco. She didn’t want Mannie to know what his teacher had done with his help…but she wasn’t going to be able to prevent it. For that alone, Adele Blanco needed to go down.

She reminded herself that Mannie could be playing the naïf to deflect suspicion. And she did listen to herself—she just didn’t believe it. “What was the deal with wolfbane?” she asked casually.

“You heard about that?” he asked, surprised—and immediately supplied his own answer. “I guess Steve told Rule. Well, it didn’t work out. She and Steve were trying to find a way to use it for an anesthetic, but all she got was a kind of paralytic. It made Steve real drowsy and he couldn’t move, but didn’t really knock him out. From the way Steve described it…”

His voice trailed off as, at last, he caught on to her line of questioning. Horror dawned, quick as a punch to the gut. “You think…you think she….”

“What did she do with the bane to make it a paralytic?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. Something about drying it, combining it with other stuff…. God.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “This is awful. This is beyond awful. I can’t get my head around it. I think…yeah, she made some kind of incense. She didn’t talk about it, but Steve said—he talked about the smell of the smoke. It smelled like watermelon. He said he didn’t know if he’d ever be able to eat watermelon again because when it was wearing off he got sick, and—and he—”

Mannie stopped, put his clenched fist on the counter, and tapped it over and over. His Adam’s apple moved as he swallowed.

She put her hand over his fist. It was unprofessional as hell. She didn’t care. He immediately unlocked his fist to clasp her hand. Hard. His eyes were blank, staring at something horrible.

“You didn’t know,” she said gently. “You couldn’t have known.”

“I should. I should have.”

“Steve didn’t. He was a lot older than you, and he was smart. If he didn’t suspect she was capable of something like this, why would it even cross your mind?”

“It didn’t. That’s for damned sure. Excuse me.” He shoved off the stool and tried to pace. There wasn’t room for it. “I need to move. I need to hit someone. You’ll get her, right?” He stopped, fixing her with a scowl that didn’t hide the sheen in his eyes. “You’ll get her.”

“Count on it.” She stood. “What did…shit. That’s my car. That’s my fucking car.”

Steve turned to look at the white Ford sedan being towed behind a wrecker with Ace Wrecking on its door. “You must have pissed off Chief Daly. He pulls that sort of shit. You wouldn’t believe how many tickets Steve got for jay-walking. Had his bike towed off twice, too, when he forgot to plug the meter.”

“I plugged the damned meter. I don’t have time for this. I don’t have freaking time for this.” She pulled out her phone. Rule had his car. He could come pick her up and…and he hadn’t called her back, had he?

She checked the time. She’d left him a voice mail over an hour ago, and he still hadn’t called. Automatically she checked her Rule-compass. As far as she could tell, he was exactly where he’d been last time she checked. Not that she was accurate enough to say he hadn’t moved at all, not at this distance, but…

The phone’s display told her she had a text message from him, sent right after she left the voicemail. She touched it.

Headed 4 clanhome. CU 2nite.

Fear slid through her, soft and slick as vomit. Rule never used texting abbreviations. He loathed them. And he wasn’t headed for Clanhome.

He was in trouble. From Adele, from Friar, she didn’t know which—but he was in trouble. And she had no car, no backup.

Or did she? She spun to face Mannie, thumbing through her contact list. “You have a car. A Mustang.”

“Yeah, I told you…what’s wrong?”

“I need it.”