Eileen Wilks - Human Nature

THE blouse was silk, crimson, and new. The blood was crimson, too.

Lily looked down at her ruined blouse, grimaced, and slid out of her government-issue Ford. She ought to put on her jacket. It was too damned chilly for April, dammit, and the jacket would hide the blood and her shoulder holster. She tried to avoid alarming the neighbors, which both blood and gun were apt to dobut the blood was still damp.

Bad enough shed ruined the blouse. She didnt want to ruin her jacket, too. It wasnt new, but it fit like a dream.

Good thing she didnt have far to go. Wonder of wonders, there had actually been a parking spot only two houses down from the pleasant two-story row house where she was staying while in Washington, D.C. which had been way too long. She missed San Diego. She missed the heat. She missed her cat, her grandmother, her father. She even missed her sisters. And maybe, though she was sure it was a sign of imminent mental collapse, she actually missed her mother.

Lily could have parked around back. There was a single-car garage off the alley with room for a second vehicle behind the first if you left the garage door open and didnt mind having the rear of your car jut slightly into the alley. But then getting the other car outRules Mercedeswould be a pain, and she had places to go in that car tonight.

It was her birthday. She intended to celebrate, dammit.

Lily stabbed her key into the lock, entered, and shut and locked the door behind her. Rule was at the back of the house. That was one of the cool things about the mate bond: she knew where he was. The direction, anyway, and in a rough sense the distance.

Sorry Im late, she called as she sped for the stairs. I need to shower and change, but Ill hurry.

Theyll hold the reservation.

The man whod spoken came out of the dining room that bridged the parlor with the kitchen. His black dress shirt was unbuttoned at the neck. His black dress slacks broke at just the right point on his black shoes. His hair stopped just short of black, being mink brown, thick, and a bit long for current fashion. He had a lean face, sharp-featured, with a sensuous mouth and eyes the same color as his hair. The dark slashes of his eyebrows mirrored the pitch of his cheekbones.

Dressing all in black made most men look like Goth wannabes. Not Rule. Maybe it was the excellent body beneath the civilized clothing that made it work. Maybe it was the sheer arrogance of the man. He looked good. He knew it. He would have looked good in tattered jeans, a doormans uniform, or in nothing at all.

He knew that, too. Lilys heartbeat hitched and she paused without intending to, one hand on the banister, and just looked at him.

Mine.

It was a thought, an attitude, Rule wouldnt have approved. Tough. He was hers and sometimes she just had to revel in that. In him.

This is supposed to be dinner, not a race, Rule said mildly as he walked toward her. If you Those wonderful eyebrows drew down. Is that your blood?

The way she stood, with one foot on the stairs and her back mostly to him, he couldnt have seen it. Must have smelled it. Damned gremlins, she muttered, and turned. Yes, but its a scratch, no more. I was careless.

His eyes were getting blacker. Too black.

Theres no one for you to kill, she said firmly. The surviving imps have already been sent back.

Imps? His eyes returned to normal and his eyebrows lifted. I hadnt heard of an outbreak.

It wasnt a biggie. Probably be on tonights news, but the gist is that a seventeen-year-old idiot in Arlington used a spell from some Internet site to summon a demon. He got a handful of imps instead.

The eyebrows went higher. This spell was on the Internet?

She sighed. So not good news, is it? MCD tries. They have people watching for stuff like that, but they cant catch everything. It would be worse, of course, if any of the summoning spells actually worked. This one had been more effective than most, since it actually did summon something.

Damned imps. Supposedly the major search engines will wipe out the cache they have for that site, but who knows how many idiots have already seen it? Listen, I need that shower. If you want to hear more

You need to be tended. Imps claws arent poisonous, but they probably werent clean, either.

She waved that aside. The EMTs already cleaned up the wound. Scratch, she amended. Its long but shallow, honest. I just want to wash off, forget about minor hellspawn, and go eat something fancy by candlelight.

Hmm. He studied her face, but whatever he saw there seemed to reassure him. There may be a present involved, also.

Another one? Hed already given her earringsexquisitely handmade lilies made from citrine, topaz, garnets, and what she suspected were emeralds. And the way hed given them to herwell. Rule was big on presentation.

She grinned and started up the stairs. Even better.

He followed. I thought the FBI used Wiccans to deal with imps.

They do. We do, Lily corrected herself. Now and then she still spoke as if she werent an FBI agent herself, though it had been almost six months since Ruben Brooks recruited her for his special Unit. Which just proved how weird minds could be, considering the intensive training shed almost finished at Quantico.

Training that had been much interrupted. Major upheavals between the realms will do that. But the teenage idiot did his summoning just as I was headed back from Quantico, which of course Ida knew, since she knows everything, so she sent me. There were a couple patrol officers on-scene, but they arent trained for imps. Still, we were able to keep them contained until the coven arrived.

You had help, then.

Sure. Those two uniforms. She unbuttoned her blouse and pulled it off. Trash. This is just trash now. She sighed. The shirt was the perfect shade of red for her, but even if she got the blood out, the silk was ripped.

He took the shirt from her. Here, Ill get rid of it. You and two uniformed officers kept an imp outbreak contained?

It wasnt an outbreak, she said, heading for the bathroom. The row house had been built in the nineteen-teens, way before people routinely put in master baths, so there was a single bathroom on each floor. But the bathroom on this floor was the one thing shed miss when she finally finished her training and went homemarble floor, granite-topped counter with vessel sinks, a glass-walled shower stall, and a huge tub.

No time for that tub now. She reached into the shower stall and turned on the hot water. Five of the nasty little creatures dont constitute an outbreakjust a huge pain in the ass. Good thing Gans idea about baiting them with blood worked.

She fell silent. Gana former demon whod become a friend in the most unlikely waywas missing. So was Lilys boss. So were two even dearer friends, Cynna Weaver and Cullen Seabourne. Theyd been kidnapped, along with a few otherslike a special assistant to the president and a trigger-happy FBI agent Lily had worked with. Not just kidnapped, either, but snatched into another realm. There was no saying if or when theyd return.

Lily was not naturally an optimist. What cop was? But she was determined to believe they were okay. All of them. They were okay, and sooner or later theyd find a way to come home. She refused to consider other possibilitiesat least for six months. Thats the deal shed made with herself. For six months shed assume the best instead of the worst.

Rule took her shoulder, turned her to face him, and kissed her gently on the lips. Theyll be fine, Lily. Even your obnoxious orange friend.

She found a smile. I think its my turn to say that.